Retrospective - Space Wolves - Wolf Scouts

Welcome to this weeks retrospective, this week dealing with the most sneaky of sneakys, Space Wolf Scouts.

This squad was very much my baby, with some over the shoulder input by Matt. A few years ago I stumbled across a (now defunct) website ran by sculptor Matt Gubser, and found an interesting article on building scouts using marine, guard and chaos marauder parts. I showed this article to Matt who said something along the lines of ‘you can do that’. So I did.

[Ss] Lol, I remember it a little differently but will run with that version for ease of narrative. 

Each scout was built around a specific theme, those being a leader, sniper, a couple of cc scouts and a pair of support scouts.

[Ss] Sure this is something we spent much time batting around trying to nail down each guy , think one or two may have been almost scrapped and re started , I always enjoy collaborative design more than doing it by myself, hoping slowly over time me and Steve can bring you some nice new stuff at some point.

The main parts of the figure are built from Space Marines (torso, lower legs) and chaos marauders (upper legs, arms), with pieces from the Kroot sprue, Catachan sprue and various accessories. The best use of parts I think are the backpacks – these are from the original metal Space Wolf Scout sgts from the early 90’s. Matt picked up a few while you could still order bits from GW, a service im still lamenting the loss of.

[Ss] One minute of silence for  bitz service ............ 

Lest we forget.

In all seriousness , never forget ...

The basic premise of the article was the use of guard/marauder upper legs combined with marine lower legs to give the impression of a lighter armour that still had design cues from power armour. Lots of green stuff was used across the squad, mostly to fill gaps in the legs and re-sculpt areas of detail.

My personal favourite is the scout we nicknames Knives, a shouty head and some extreme posing gives him a massive amount of movement which combined with the direction of the arms and knives creates a really dynamic figure.

[Ss] Yeah, its between him and the squad leader for me , he's a great model for MoTW these days , still struggling to come to terms with the decision to sell them ....

[Ss]But, wait , there's more , and we have been saving the best til last *wink wink* coming soon.

Once again, you can find Matt's blog at Rant in E Minor.


Thanks for reading.

Painting White - the bane of my life.

Well, not so much in this case, the white has been made so much simpler due to the white undercoat and a grey shading wash. The problem was every other area, because i'd used a white undercoat. Im not the neatest painter to begin with so everything had to be done with more care than im used to.

Im going to get the rest of the army assembled before painting the rest - i've got some games arranged with Sorrowshard over at Rant in E Minor at the end of febuary and not much spare time so i'll need every second I get.

I won't bore you with any more text today, i'll just move straight on to the pretty pictures.

As always, thanks for reading.

Retrospective - Space Wolves - Grey Hunters & Blood Claws

Been quiet on the hobby front the last few days, the wife has had me sorting out the post christmas DIY. Normal service should resume as from now.

Onto the task at hand for todays post, which is the second of the Space Wolves Retrospectives, this week on the troops choices – Grey Hunters and Blood Claws.

Both of these units were built by Sorrowshard, with a few additional conversions and sculpting by myself. One of my favourite miniatures in this group is the lead Blood Claw, based on the 3^rd edition Wolf Codex cover, which is one of a small selection of miniatures that didn’t have any work done by myself.

A large amount of WFB Dwarf parts were used on the army, mostly weapons to add some Nordic flare to the force. Makes more sense for a Wolf to be swinging an axe than a chainsword if you ask me. Another thing to note is the bases. Figure if I mention it on the blog someone might email him and annoy him enough to finish them.

I'll leave you with Sorrowshard to waffle on about how much he hates painting now, see you at the bottom.

[Ss] Christmas and my shiny copy of new vegas have taken a huge poop on my hobby mojo, just working my way back up now. This was, I recall, a massive bits order to GW , I think everything is technically converted, which was fun, I tried tried hard to not repeat heads if possible and ransacked the entire GW range for anything suitable, just ask kal.... I hate painting rank and file and this lot killed me, I still have the second unit of converted hunters unpainted sat in a box on the side some years later .....

The Codex cover conversion was a bit of fun and I was pleased with how it came out. Its good looking back now, as these days I would paint this lot very differently , Looking at these Im pleased with the way my painting has since matured.

Up next is Steve's very pimpola wolf scouts, treat of treats !!

If you a fan of Eldar of either variety, Matts blog, Rant in E Minor is a veritable treasure trove of pointy eared delights, even more so when he actually paints something. Well worth a visit.

As Matt has said, Wolf Scouts next, one of the units that I built from the ground up, but you'll have to wait a few days for those.

In the meantime next up should be the first finished Sanguinary Guard, in the next couple of days if the white doesn't take forever to finish.

Thanks for reading.

Heralds Encarmine - a New Year, a New Project

Evening all, welcome to the first post of 2011.

Apologies for the lack of updates of the festive period, aside from working every waking hour (christmas time in retail isn't exactly fun) I was brought down with the flu as from christmas day, meaning 5 days in bed ill. Not happy.

One of the things I wanted to do this year was make good on a few of the things I keep telling people i'll do - save money, give up smoking, conquer the earth, that kind of thing.

One thing i've been saying i'll do since the Blood Angels book came out is paint a Sanguinary Guard army, based on the Angels Encarmine scheme from the BA book -

Image copyright Games Workshop, used without permission.

 Yup, i'll be painting white Sanguinary Guard. About 25 to be precise.


Now im not going to do what I did last time I painted anything in white armour (red and white quartered marines undercoated black), im going to work off a white undercoat. Seeing as I hate white undercoats this is going to take a while, so expect sporadic updates until I get the speed up.


Started on a test this afternoon, sprayed white then washed with a mix of 1/1/25 codex grey/vallejo glaze medium/water. This gives plenty of shading to the armour, but a light enough coat that a quick highlight of white should finish it. I've blacked out any metal/flesh areas and washed any gold areas with a couple of coats of devlan mud. Time to basecoat the gold now I think.


Not the greatest of photos im afraid, but it gives a good idea where the paintjob is headed.

A happy new year to you all and as usual, thanks for reading.