Rebuilding My Space Wolves Army Journal.

[DarkReaper40k]

Nothing like the old school...

One of the fun things about having collected an army over the span of nearly a decade is the range of miniatures you gather over time, especially the generations of the same ones.

In particular I'm talking about my Rhino Transports. As you will see below I still make use of 2 of the old school Rhinos one of which has seen far better days while the second is still in good shape! So what does this mean? Well for the moment I'm not going to do much work on them BUT once I have finished cleaning off my Grey Hunters from their 2 week simple green bath. The Rhino seen on the right is going for a bath of its own.

Why? Well because after removing the top hatch which was barely recognizable any more with the intention of replacing it with a spare from the bitz box I quickly realized... there is way too much paint on this thing. To better see what I mean, look at the bottom right picture, all that 'ripped paper edge' look that you see around the edges of where the hatch gets glued into place? That's not cut up plastic... that's the layers of paint that ripped when I removed the hatch... I seriously cringed at the very sight of this.



So let this be a lesson to those with little experience in the hobby as of yet, do NOT keep changing your mind of your paint scheme. Practice first and find something you are happy with and THEN paint your good stuff. As well... don't buy second hand stuff that was painted with questionable methods, even if its dirt cheap and you think you can tackle repainting it because as you can see the difference from a brand new bought and painted (left images) compared to second handed and repainted (right images)... there is a serious difference down the road.

I may yet decommission the nightmare and transform it into battlefield wreckage. The one that is in good shape I think will be upgraded to a custom Whirlwind at some point as I could use a second one. This of course means I'll be dropping some more cash to replace these two with the current Rhino's but... I'll wait and see if Simple Green can help me rectify this disaster of a paint job first.

Stay tuned for an update on the progress of these two and their younger siblings (I do own 2 of the updated rhinos).  

[DarkReaper40k]

The Predators



The upgrades to previously existing vehicles is continuing steadily. The two I plan on talking about in this post are my Predator tanks that are configured in the formerly known battle patterns "Annihilator" and "Destructor" or at least that is before the new wolf codex did away with those names.

As you'll see in the pictures, I've sported lots of battle damage, every thing from simple weapons fire scars to the claw marks of genestealer talons and even bigger, nastier things. As well, my twin Predators are going to have something in common that none of my other vehicles will and that is a marine sticking out the top hatch looking for a fight! I've always steered away from such because I hate the idea of such details getting broken during transit but I really want my updated army to have a strong Fenrisian feel, so the hunter tanks are going to look the part!

For the pictures directly to the right, the warrior standing ready I built with a little homage to the marvel hero Thor from the Ultimate series. I say that because the beard and grizzled look just screamed Ultimate Thor to me and while I didn't go for a hammer, I thought the axe was still a pretty sweet look. Unless you are actually familiar with space wolves sprues you probably won't notice that I've combined old and new bitz to create him. It's not a big deal but I think its still worthy of mention because honestly, the whole point of the hobby is to have fun with it and mix and match pieces to your liking. As much as I love the new stuff, I still have a decent pile of the old stuff and mixing it in I think will help immortalize the age of my army and if no one notices, well it still has sentimental value to me as the collector of the army.



For those who haven't tackled battle damage before or have but are looking for some more ideas, I present to you a few tips based on how I have gone about giving my tanks the rough look only war can give.

The exacto blade is all that I used as it is sharp enough to slice into the plastic and thin enough to be versatile in what designs it creates.

Bullet holes are probably the easiest. All you have to do it point the tip of the blade against the surface that you want the hole, give a firm press and turn it like a screwdriver a few times. You'll start to carve a hole and you can either do only a few turns to create a shallow hole or do several more and puncture right through.

While this will make the hole, you'll probably find that that its a little too clean like a hole puncture to paper rather than the hard impact that comes from an actual bullet against a hard metal surface.

To achieve such a look, place the tip of the blade in the bullet hole you've already made but tilt it to a roughly 30 degree angle (no you don't have to be exact, just try and and see what works) and drag it around in the same circular motion as the hole itself. Try a combination of gentle and harder sweeps because you'll find that gentle with help give the impact look while the harder you press the more of a crater/destructive look you'll achieve.

One thing always good to keep in mind though, bullets don't always line up in neat, perfect little patterns. Rapid fire and assault weapons are more about the fire rate and spray of death rather than accuracy and so while you will still hit your target, the placement of bullet holes can be some what chaotic at times. To try and resemble this, I create something of a zig-zag pattern to start with and vary the size of each bullet hole. I end mix a few smaller ones around the pattern and include one or two large ones, not caring for separation as I don't want it to looked planned.

Notice in the pictures I've provided how the bullet holes also do not stay on one armour plate but rather fly across the surface of the tank in general. It's just a little way of giving it a little more realism assuming you have an open imagination.













Creating the scratch marks from a tyranids claws or similar isn't much harder than creating the bullet holes, it just requires a different approach.

First consider what is attacking, in my case I imagined tyranids like genestealers rending claws and even a hive tyrants massive scything talons. That in mind, I reminded myself that they have pairs of clawed arms and will attacking with both at different angels...

So I used the exacto blade to slice simple marks into different surfaces to plan out attack patterns. I worked with sets of three that angle in wards because I assume the claws will contract as they complete the slash and made the marks criss cross like its really trying to attack the same spot and break through the armour.

Once I had that established, it was a simple matter of making relatively deep cuts along the claw marks to start. Then I cut along the same lines but at different angels to slice out chunks to create shallow and deeper slashes in the armour. I also made sure to carry the slashes around the corners of armour edges to simulate the motion of the creatures claws sweeping over the armour in the attack.







These final pictures are just to show a little more of what all happened to the tanks in general. As you can see the second warrior is a little more youthful looking with a clean shaven face and mohawk type look. This one reminded me of Soul from that crazy movie DoomsDay and so I played it up. Giving him a pistol and chain sword as it makes him more energetic and in your face I think. Which is god since he's got the lascanons which are going to be angering my enemies when they tear swathes of destruction through my opponents armoured lines.

Other little details like the wolf emblem on the turret came from the new wolf pack box while the emblem on the front of the tanks came from the old grey hunter and blood claw boxes. You may also notice a wolf pelt hanging off one of the sponsons, its a cape/cloak from the fantasy goblins box set which fit perfectly.

Note: You may notice me reference fantasy pieces a fair bit in these conversions and that's because not only do I just have them laying around in my bitz box begging for a use but they also fit the feel of the wolves. If you don't understand, do a brief google search about Scottish warriors, Vikings, Barbarians and you'll start to see where the Space Wolves get their image from.

Any who, until its time to paint these guys I think this is all I'm going to do to them.  

[Jason Kharo]

I'm really liking the Preds, great work on them matie.
Love the scratches, but careful not to go overboard with them.  

[DarkReaper40k]

I have something of a rule when it comes to battle damage and it's as simply as no more than one type of the same damage per facing. So between the grey and blue preds, each have at most 3 areas of scratches and bullet fire. Spread it out and thus you have a little something for each side to see but not so much that it looks like the tank belongs in the scrap yard.

and of course, once the new paint scheme is applied, things will look really unified.  

[DarkReaper40k]

The Land Raider



Yet another of my armoured devision, the Land Raider has at long last finally been finished. It sat in my army box for ages only partially finished and well, at long last it got all its coverings and such.

One of the biggest cringes I had with the state of this model was my sloppy assembly from ages past. While most of it was put together right, the vents on the back of it were misaligned and showed a fair bit of flak for a lack of a better term.

In general when this happens hobbyists will break out the Green Stuff (a GW modeling puddy) and fill the gaps, smooth, let dry and sand to the desired look. But for me.. I'm just feeling lazy and I honestly don't know where I have placed my green stuff or if I have any right now for that matter!

So as you can see in the below image, I opted for a simpler method by simply using my ever faithful exacto blade to simply shave off the excess. I think gently brushed the blade along the area at gradually changing angles (following the roundness of the vents) to in a way sand down the modification and reshape it to be uniform.



Once little errors like this were cleaned up, I went about updating the model like the predators. Adding battle damage here and there as well as a few of those fantasy goblin shields for decoration. I have a few metal wolf pelts and monster skulls that I am debating about adorning the top of the tank with but after a few tries to just see how it would all fit, I think its more clutter than anything else.

Which is important to consider because you don't want your models so rediculously detailed that you can't successfully paint it or recognize the type of unit it represents! I say this because my land raider would start to look more like an ork battlewagon had I gone through with those ideas and Space Wolves don't adorn the vehicles with skulls very much unlike Orks and Khorne. So... I figured I'll stay away from that and focus more on the paint job for this model, maybe try my hand at painting some imagery and give its greater importance that way!

 

[Caleidah]

One thing that was hugely important in Viking culture, as in the Codex, are the sagas. Tales of personal honor and glory that would be so great that 1) they would be remembered and feared by their enemies and 2) Odin would call them to Valhalla to fight with him for all time. If you have faith in yourself or know someone with enough skill, use the sides of your Land Raider as a canvas for the sagas of one of your Lords.  

[DarkReaper40k]

Oh trust me, epic saga imagery is on my to do list. My Wolf Lord has some very impressive war stories to use from over the years playing the army.

Still one of my all time favourites was in 3rd edition when he stood his ground against a 2,000points Dark Angels army (plasma heavy in point of fact) and shrugged off every shot that came his way and proceeded to flip them all off by taking 'their rightful objective' and walk off with it back to his deployment zone. That was back when the Blood Feud rules were in effect and boyyyyy did I have fun nagging my opponent (and good friend) that day because his Dark Angels did more harm to themselves trying to shoot me than anything else. Twas a hilarious day in the eyes of Russ!  

[DarkReaper40k]

Alrighty, back on page 1 I showed my oooold Grey Hunters who've been around since the start of my getting into this hobby and whose paint jobs (multiple ones) were definitely showing their age. I also took a moment to talk about a little solution called simple green and now, as promised I have the results for all to see!



To get started, I have a screw on cap plastic jar which I poured the SG solution into and then dumped all those marines into. I let them sit in the solution for just over 2 weeks because lets face it, with the different layers of tamiya model paint and games workshop paint, I wanted to make sure there was sufficient time to chew through it all.

As you can see in the bottom left image, that's what the boys look like just soaking and already the paint is looking ready to fall off. I used a cheap denture tooth brush (bought at a dollar store) to scrub the paint off and used a plastic container to store the cleaned off models in.



For those who may try this way of cleaning your models, I've included these pictures to show that it isn't a one step process to perfection. You can see that the scrubbing has indeed removed a large amount of the paint but there is still a lot of crap on there. Some models actually were all but perfectly clean (fewer coats of paint were on them no doubt) but over all, they are no where near where I want them to be. So I placed them back in the jar of simple green for another week along with some metal miniatures that I just felt it was time to finally strip the paint off of and redo (assassin models and the original wolf lord and rune priest).

After that third week of soaking, I scrubbed again and took off more of the paint but some of the final details (eye sockets and vents on packs for example) were a little clogged. So I used my trusty exacto blade and with a few gentle scraps took the excess paint right off. Here is the finished result:



oh and just a word of caution as I have recently learned, Simple Green lovesss modeling puddy. I had used some (different than GW green stuff brand though) and the SG apparently chew it up, softening it and making it break off and ruin any past sculpts I had done. Soo... should you be cleaning a model with sculpting work on it, be warned you'll be forced to redo all that work should you bath that model in Simple Green.