Quick Vehicle Destroyed Templates

I think I've had enough of cutting out paper to demonstrate vehicle "6" results from destruction.  Either that or marking the space with dice.  My friend Jeff ( check out his blog ) and I spent the afternoon Saturday making up 16 rhino sized templates, 4 Land Raider, and 6 60mm round templates.  We also started on some steel wool fires for any vehicle "5" results.  For relatively nothing, we have some quick and easy templates to get us by.  If I wanted to spend more time, we would probably bevel the edges and create more organic crater shapes.

Now, these aren't highly done painted or super modelled, but they're great for something on the board.  I plan on doing more elaborate ones for my Dark Eldar.

We started out with 1/4" board.  Jeff cut them to size and we grabbed all of our spare vehicle tracks and space marine vehicle kits.  By using forgeworld doors, we have tons of leftover parts.  We used the ever trusty hot glue gun and put all the parts down.

For the blast markers, we took steel wool and cut it into a "flame" shape and hot glued them down to 40mm bases.  I refuse to flip my vehicles over... it's just asking to get the paint chipped up.

Then a liberal sanding of the crater templates and primed them both in black.

 Here's our paint progression and a series of shots.  For the craters we started with a light drybrush of adeptus battlegrey across all the sand.  The metal was done in tin bitz with a boltgun drybrush.  We then worked in patches of graveyard earth (and a little bit of khaki) and codex grey.

Jeff's son came up with a great idea to work embers/flames into the base.  So we did a few patches of blood red / blazing orange / golden yellow, then stippled in some codex grey.  When we were all done we did a light drybrush of fortress grey over the entire base.  Not bad for a quick afternoon project.  I do think I'm going to go back and add some scorched marks on the metal to break up the metal parts.

The flames were taking quite a bit longer to dry so that'll be a project for another day.  I did a healthy blood red core, we'll be adding in some yellows then go over the top in blacks and grey to simulate smoke.  Finally we'll take some cotton and "pull" it over the steel wool to add additional smoke effects.

I'm still stuck fixing the basement, so most of my time has been working with a large paintbrush.  Hopefully I'll have it done so I can get back to my Marines for Nova!

Adepticon Progress & Weighting Bases

With Adepticon right around the corner, I snapped a shot of my progress.  Here's all the miniatures I need to finish, unfortunately most are not done!  I did finally get everything assembled and based, so now it's speed painting time... and time to rack up some points with the wife so I can get extra painting in.

Blood Angels Finished
10 Jump Assault Marines
8 Sanguinary Guard


Blood Angels Yet to Do
10 Walking Assault Marines
3 Sanguinary Priests
Chaplain
Sanguinator
Dante
Drop Pod
Baal Predator

Orks Finished
25 Boyz
5 Grotz

Orks Yet to Do
67 Boyz
15 Grotz
16 Lootaz
7 Nob Bikers
Warboss on Bike
Big Mek
Mekboy Stompa!
6 Killa Kanz
1 Deffdread

I've also started weighting the bases of my Blood Angels.  I do this for three reasons:

1. Many of the miniatures are top heavy it keeps them from falling over.
2. I've inserted a rare earth magnet inside the washer and combined with the metal washer adheres to my cut magnet base in my carrying case allowing me to pack the miniatures in tight!
3. I just like the feel of a heavier miniature :)

As you can see I end up placing two washers on top of each other and gluing them to the base.  I then used some wood putty to round out the outside of the base and sand it down.  Hopefully it looks disguised (all my Blood Angels to date have been using this method.

I've also decided that for my 10 assault marines on foot and for my Chaplain I magnatized the backpacks.  That way I can switch over to jump packs with relative ease.  Now it remains to be seen if I'm able to not lose the backpacks mid-game!

Tomorrow is the Adepticon team tournament primer where we'll help test out missions and get some practice games in.  Two of my teammates are driving up from Memphis.  Looking forward to it!  My big test will be to see if I actually like using the Baal Predator with the flamestorm cannon.

How-To: Fenrisian Wolves

Hey all, I had a bunch of people ask how I went about making these wolves so I'll post my tutorial.  Here's the quick & dirty method.  Should be up on the Space Wolves blog soon too! http://space-wolves-grey.blogspot.com/

The challenge for me was the goblin wolves only contained two poses and looked too "happy".  They didn't have that feral beast about them.  I found the chaos warhound box as a great substitute.  Not only are they reasonably priced, they have all unique poses.  Here is how I went about making them in a fairly easy manner.

First, it was hacking off any chaos bits.  Horns were chopped off along the top of the back, and any scales on the flanks were shaved down.  I also clipped some of the bottom teeth and trimmed off any horns on the legs/ankles.  I put on the tail, but shaved it down to a simple cylinder without any spikes.

I then added greenstuff to the back and top of the hindquarters as well as rolled it around the tail.  Fur was achieved by starting towards the front of the model and working towards the tail pulling with a sculpting tool.  Remember, keep the tool wet (yes, I've ingested my fair share of greenstuff). 

Then I plugged the two spots for the old "ears/horns" and rolled a small triangle for an ear.  Using the pointed end of the citadel sculpting tool I made the interior of the ear.  Some of the warhounds had stunted noses, which required a small dot to be added at the end.

 My painted ones are in the previous post, enjoy!

Working now on finishing up my 2 Lords on Thunderwolves and starting up the drop pod.

Empire Progress, Knight Conversion

Got my first 20 spearmen done... 30 to go!  Hopefully this big block of 50 will pay off!  Still a little work to do on the standard bearer, but overall I'm happy with the quality.  This is definitely a speed painting army.  The banner decal I purchased off an old site "Imperial Forge".  Nice decals and will help speed up things.  Unfortunately it looks like they're no longer in business.

I'd like to use some of the old empire set for the second through 5th ranks.  I love the spears at attention to flush out the back ranks.  I picked up some extra empire heads to do some simple head swaps.  The question is will these old plastics mix in with the current state troops?

Finally I figured I could use some knights with great weapons.  Now that they're back to being +2 and with empire already having low/average initiative, the extra strength after the charge may come in handy.  Not a big fan of the knights of the white wolf though.  I figured the new plastic greatswords would be a great kitbash.  After piecing this together, I think it could use a slightly longer torso.  The greatsword torso sits a little shorter due to the legs adding a portion of the torso.  Thoughts on if this will work or if I'll need to add some plastic card?

Just started churning out my old metal greatswords.  Should have the unit finished this week!

Fenrisian Wolves - Green Stuff

I had the chance to get my first practice game in with the Space Wolves on Saturday, they look so sad in their various stages of paint.  My opponent didn't even know about the Fenrisian Wolves.  So sad, they're such a great part of the flavor of Space Wolves.  Even if they're not the most effective, I'm determined to make them work.

The plastic chaos warhound unit seems to be the best fit.  I like the dynamic poses and the fact that their are more then two variants (unlike the goblin wolves).  I trimmed all of the horns, scales and tails and worked on some greenstuff to make them more "wolflike".  I also added some ears.  Here are my first 7.  The camera battery was dying so I didn't have the time to set up my photobooth.  Sorry about the shots!  Now about 10 or so more to go.

By the Power of Greyskull!

I've been doing too many assembly line armies, and I think it's time to reward myself with something fun.  When I saw this space wolf head months ago, it screamed "He-Man". 

Then I took a look at the white lion from the High elf chariot and thought it would make a good battle-cat.  Combined with some chaos marauder horsemen parts and a whole lot of greenstuff... I think I can make a fenrisian mounted wolf lord with a "frost sword" and storm sheild modeled up like he-man.  Yes it's so out of warhammer context, but I think it'll be a fun project.

By the power of Greyskull!

If you have any ideas on how to make this conversion work, let me know.