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.

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.

Retrospective - Space Wolves, Wolf Guard bikers

Today im starting what will be an irregular series of retrospective articles about a few of my older projects, that should give a bit of an insight into what I enjoy doing in the hobby.

The first army to get the retro treatment are the Space Wolves, very different to my current armies as they aren't actually mine. Firstly, some background on the project.

About 5 years ago, I was living with a good friend of mine, Sorrowshard from Rant in E Minor, going through the usual motions of a night at the painting desk (drinking a ton of whisky, not much actual painting) trying to decide on the next project. We've both been major fans of the Wolves and Nordic mythology for years, and while thumbing a well worn copy of the excellent Lone Wolves graphic novel, the idea was decided - a kill team based on the Wolf Guard from the book.

[Ss] Yeah I went all dribbly over lone wolves, best depiction of wolves I have read/seen thus far , though prospero burns may eclipse it ....I actually have both hard and softback copies of lone wolves ,lol 

They couldn't be any old Wolf Guard though, these had to be bad-ass bike riding Wolves, based on a couple of panels showing them on bikes.

[Ss] Yeah most of the ideas were mostly robbed from lone wolves plus I think I had to cook up a couple more to pad out the squad. The bitz box massacre produced these , Steve contributed some stuff , I think a load had to be mail ordered, which existed back then.  

Sorrowshard will tell you himself he's not the greatest converter on the planet so I was drafted in to do some sculpting and fix a few of his more obvious anatomy based errors. What I didn't know is that an entire army was going to follow, and we'll be showing the rest of the army in the coming weeks, with plenty of notes from the painter (Sorrowshard) and myself.

[Ss] Living so far from El'D since has forced me to up my game conversions wise, I'm still nowhere near as expert as Steve, but have definitely improved. They started of as essentially a bitz mash with crude filling, which is about as advanced as any of my 'conversions' were for years, Steve essentially cleaned them up and added some finer details. I enjoyed doing the squad so much it kinda snowballed into a whole army as doing it created a whole load of new ideas that 'had' to be pursued. El'D had to carry more and more of the modelling as the army became ever more ambitious, as you will see in the coming weeks.....  

My Eldar painting work is over on E Minor  for anyone who is interested. 

Thats about if for now, but I will have something up on sunday, starting work on one of my biggest projects yet.......

Thanks for reading.