Thunder, thunder, thunder wolves!!!

I caved and got a couple of boxes of these. I also used the two wolves from the Logan Angry Sleigh as mounts for two variants of Wolf Guard/Wolf Lord characters. I still want to do an Iron Priest on Thunderwolf at some point but will have to go looking for extra Thunder Wolves.

I spent some time painting the wolves because they are easy and I get to feel a somewhat false sense of accomplishment. Most of this squad made their tabletop debut this past Friday and managed to put down the Swarmlord, a pair of Tyrant Guard, and 30 Termagants. Storm Shields are sweet, and made sweeter with S10 Thunderhammers.

So some WIP shots. I am officially out of Space Wolf models that I want to assemble currently so I guess I am finally forced to paint. Progress reports as they happen.

So how easily distracted am I?

The painting mood is just not taking with me these days so I am instead building Space Wolf stuff. Most of which I will need for the league that I have yet to play a game in. So I decided to start work on a Stormfang.

I was not too inspired by the model on first glance but I do like it better now that I have had it in hand. I also (of course) had to do something to change the damn thing because just assembling a stock model would be too frikkin convenient!....sorry. Anyway...

I was considered the changes I could make. Now the model itself is essentially half a Caestus Assault Ram so it has a ridiculously blocky profile. My original thought was to move the cockpit to the front of the craft as I figured it would make more sense if the pilot of a transport could actually see the disembarkation area he was depositing his troops into. But then I decided to leave the cockpit at the rear and marvel at the Battlestar Galactica Viper arrangement that this model has.

I added control surfaces more akin to the wings of a Viper. I moved the lascanons (from a Predator kit) so that they are now mounted on the wings (like a Viper too) and reversed the engine cowling on the top so that the flyer's profile is thinner at the front and gets thicker as it goes towards the cockpit. If you are wondering as to why there is a gap on the sides of the cowling well, funny story. I was trying to heat up the piece to bend it slightly to conform better to the new arrangement and so left it on the metal shade of my desk lamp. When that did not produce the desired heat I instead placed the piece directly on the light bulb. Then I saw something shiny and forgot about it until I noticed it melting. So in short, plasti-card strips will be covering my shame.
 
I really like the lines of this thing now although I must confess it now looks more like a fighter than a transport....if fighter could be made from metal shipping containers.

Pics of the WIP...

Quick Update:
The good news: Now primed. I will be blue-tacking the missiles into the pods as it still leaves the option of using the heavy bolters.

 

The bad news: Now we are at the painting stage again....sigh

Ok, next weekend I will complete Ranulf (I promise), and get this bugger going along with the Caestus Assault Ram. After all another Stormfang is already on the way. The only question is do I make it look like this one or implement my original plan. That would involve a more dramatic rearrangement of the ships components, but I am still liking the idea of it. Argh!!

Venerable Dread Ranulf is getting closer to completion

 I made some changes to the colour scheme of the armored chest piece to bring it more in line with the rest of the paint. I wanted to put less yellow than the previous Contemptor just to give the model a different feel.

I am still debating about what to do with the currently black surface of the Blizzard Shield. Right now the idea that is winning is to put a large red arrow pointing up with the wolf icon at its apex. Admittedly this idea may be inspired by the incessant re-watching of the movie "300: Rise of an Empire" that I have done while painting the dreads. And I could watch it again. It's not really a great movie, I just find it entertaining for some reason.I think a bright band of red across the shield would make it look a lot more interesting. And if not then black easily covers up red.

Anyway as you can see I have made some progress on the axe blade and the runes on the weapon and shield. Once the main colours are down I will attempt an OSL effect around the runes.

I did one coat of spray fix and managed to over spray some parts of the head of the model but repaired that so the frosted parts are no longer apparent.

Space Wolf Venerable Dread Ranulf: Initial painting

So here are some WIP shots of the Dread now dubbed Ranulf, in memory of the 2nd Edition SW special character. Ranulf was described as the Largest Space Wolf ever other than Leman Russ himself.

These are the shots showing the base coats of some of the colours and the initial highlighting on the yellow.

Space Wolf Dreadnought Herd

Sometimes a delve through the bitz box reveals just how much material I have stored away.

So from the SW dread box set I had resolved I would use the kit to primarily construct Bjorn as he finally had a decent looking resculpt.

The axe and shield combo was interesting as well but looked a bit clunky on such a low, squat model. I had an idea to resolve that.

And of course I had to make Murderfang just as long as I did not use that atrocious head piece from the kit. So in all my dread count went up as follows:

Here they are in all of their overly decorated glory. I cast several icons from the Logan kit (yes that damned hover sleigh) and the dread kit to add to my ever expanding collection of SW bling. Overall I am pleased with the results.
Bjorn

Forge World Venerable

Murderfang. Note that rather than have an exposed pilot's face (which is dumb even by 40K standards), instead I went for the appearance of a wolf-themed death mask serving to almost bind the pilot to the dread. It  also preserves the mystery of who is in the dread.

Relic Contemptor with axe and shield. You know you have accumulated too much stuff when you can say the words, "Oh hey, I have a spare contemptor lying around." Luckily I found a good use for him. The head is the bow piece from Logan's jolly sleigh. I just love the pose-ability possible with the contemptor kit.

After these are done my Space Wolves will have 6 dreads (8 if I count those from my original SW army). No matter what happens in the future I am good for dreadnoughts.

Launch Bay Elevated Walkway: Gantry supports (complete)

As the title says they are pretty much done. I will be adding a relatively simple control panel to the top of each but essentially this part of the work is done. Now for a much needed break from this project. I know I will do more on this before the summer is out.

Below are shots of the pieces as I did the final detailing as well as a shot showing the assembled board elements as it stands now. Next part of this project depends on my time. The central building structure has about 5 floors that need to be bulked and detailed and the elevators and 2nd lighting set need to be set up.

Launch Bay Elevated Walkway: Gantry supports (detailing)

Just a quick update as I complete the final card work and detailing on these pieces. I have come to realize that the central launch rail structure is not quite central, so I will have to redo the walkway on the far side from most of these shots (the side with the Thunderbolt model). Once these are done I will need a break from this project for a few days as the time involved is getting to me. Time to go out and marvel at that unfamiliar ball of fire in the sky.

Launch Bay Elevated Walkway: Piston mechanism mock-up

Just a quick update on the initial designs for the pistons that give the walkway the illusion of being able to adjust it's height. The plastic tubes used for the pistons will not be sufficient to hold the structural integrity that the structure will need so I will be adding more foamcore to the mechanism to look like metal guides for the raising and lowering actions. These should further reinforce the structure and keep it in shape....literally.