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.

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.

The Second Coming.......

A week between updates? That's better. 

Managed to knock out the second Deff Dread this week, bringing the painted total to 2 Deff Dreads, 3 Killa Kans and a Big Mek. Must admit im relieved to have it finished, the sheer amount of chipping on it is a real time killer.

Next up for the Orks will be the second Big Mek, which i'll be showing a WIP of next week.

Also coming up next week will be the start of a retrospective series focusing on my Death Guard army, who will soon be receiving some reinforcements in the form of some Traitor Militia and a small warband of Chaos Renegades. I'll be starting the retrospective next sunday, Dec 5th.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

It's been a while.....

Wow, nearly 3 weeks without a new post. Thats really not good, and nowhere near the amount I wanted to be posting. Sadly it'll probably be going at a similar rate for the next few weeks running up to Christmas, solely down to work - when you work in retail Christmas is hell, don't let anyone tell you any differently.

Work aside it's not been the most pleasant last couple of weeks, I spent most of it down with a chest infection that I still haven't fully shaken off, added to that some severe back pain and your left with no hobby mojo whatsoever.

Well, there was some mojo, but nothing for painting. Instead, I spent the last few weeks dreaming up ideas for new armies, but thats for another post.


The one thing I did manage to do is get the first of the Big Meks finished. There's bits im not happy with but it's done at least, and that means one less figure to paint. Still needs a couple of coats of varnish to even everything out but the weather isn't great for spraying anything at the moment.

Seeing as I forgot to add a pre-painted pic of the first Big Mek i've dug one out for all to see. Built mostly from the Nob kit, with an added burna, the Kustom Force Field from the metal Big Mek and some plasticard and plastic tube for the welding mask and burna tanks.

Next up on the block will be the second Deff Dread as it's the only thing i've got undercoated at the moment, then i'll be doing a blitz on the rest of the work for Mol over at INQ28.

I've also got something in the pipeline with Sorrowshard over at Rant in E Minor, that should happen in the next few weeks. If he pulls his finger out.

Until next time, thanks for reading.