Warhound Titan (Legio Gryphonicus) Painting

Primed and base coated legs. Nuff said.

See that mostly painted head? That was what started the avalanche. A couple of months back I made a concession to my desire to work on the warhound by test fitting the head and painting it. I forced myself to put it down because the job was starting to draw me in. A few weeks ago I said "Screw it!" and just gave in. These are the base coats for the yellow portions. Included is a shot f the original War Griffons clour page from the Adeptus Titanicus game.

Warhound Titan (Legio Gryphonicus)

It has been a looong time. Stuff happened in that time. I won't waste any more of it.

So have been playing a bit more lately but I have had a desire to finish a large project and the Mars Pattern Warhound was beckoning. So over the last few weeks I have been slowly getting this beast going. It was rather intimidating at first considering the part count, and magnetizing the guns was a bit of a challenge. But I like the way the project is shaping up.

So I have had a thing for grey and yellow livery for a while now, explaining my enduring fascination with the Space Wolves. Heck my first Blood Bowl team were called the Dwarf Warhammerers, and they were in grey and yellow too.

Adeptus Titanicus was the first GW games I ever played and the War Griffons immediately caught my attention. So I had always intended to paint any titans in the legio colours. However I am focusing on a richer palate for the yellows and blues and keeping the mottled pattern as shown in the original War Griffons colour pages from the AT game booklet.

Lets start with assembling the legs and making a base. The base design was inspired by the fact that I screwed up the leg assembly so that when connected at the hip, the feet were not on the same level. So I used some mdf board scraps I had lying around to add a level to the floor beneath the rear-most leg. I avoided using any wreckage or organic shapes to simulate the titan stepping off the disembarkation ramp of it's transport....or some such thing.

P.S.

Other projects have had some minor advancements in the meantime, including some small progress on the landing bay and some progress on a Wolves list that will not be at Astro Winnipeg this year. Right now though I am enjoying bringing this behemoth to life.

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.