Space Wolves and the NEW Citadel Paint Range; Killzone Tokens and Cards

Hey there, Battle Brothers. Long time no see, but things here have been extremely busy with school, work and working with Frozencore Joe and Brian from A Gentleman's Ones on the Special Operations: KILLZONE tables (In case you have forgotten, we are working on TEN 3'x3' tables O_o)... Life happens, I suppose.

Today's Topic of Discussion

I'm here to quickly jot down a few words and share them with you, but before that here's something that I have been meaning to do for a while...

If you frequent this blog then you probably know about Special Operations: KILLZONE. And unless you have been living under a rock you probably already know that Brian is selling sets of sweet-lookin' TOKENS and CARDS designed specifically to be used in addition to your beautifully painted (right?) Special Operatives Team.

CARDS AND TOKENS FOR YOU

Brian has been working feverishly on them and they are simply beautiful and so, so elegant. I definitely think that they are necessary on the tabletop because.. well.. you have everything you need ON the tabletop: no annoying rules to remember, no more having to peruse the rulebook every time you want to check a mission detail. It's all on the cards and on the tokens. As Brian would surely say: Glorious. 
And in all seriousness: Cards make almost everything better. I actually like to say that any game that has any cards in it instantly becomes more interesting and less of a "Serious business" ordeal. Being able to surprise your opponent and stop his evil master plan by playing your Fate cards has that sweet "You have triggered my trap card" vibe to it. It's hilarious and quite frankly - a must have.

And now for today's topic.

OMG!!1! GW HAS A NEW PAINT RANGE!1! PANIC!?!!! PANIC! BUY ALL AVAILABLE PAINTS BEFORE THEY DISAPPEAR. THE END IS NIGH!

...just kidding. Don't do that. 

I'm kidding yet again. You SHOULD probably do that. 

Just so you're on the safe side, ya know?

Games Workshop's paint range has seen plenty of changes throughout the years, but this one is by far the biggest change yet (I think?). Colors come and go and so do paint pots, but now we have more colors, a wider variety: glazes, bases, layers, shades, textures, dry paint, etc. etc. You can find a color chart on Games Workshop's website, but I think it's currently down and being fixed. Eh, who knows. 

Obviously this raises some concerns. Are all the colors going to stay the same or are the formulas changing completely. From what I understand GW has a new paint factory/provider thing and while many of the colors are almost identical the formulas are not 100% and it is possible that some colors will be slightly different. Or very different. That's why the names of all the paints are different now. GW didn't want to be selling a Scorpion Green that's now quite like the Scorpion Green of the good old days.

Now, if you could please turn your attention to the first image of this blog post.. Or, you know what? I'll just post it again for all to see: 

I got this cool little card from Games Workshop. They have a few for each of the three main games and cover some of the main factions. I thought it would be a good idea to grab the only Space Wolf card and share it with the blogosphere, considering that not everyone has access to a Games Workshop store in their area. 

Now, this Space Wolf Grey Hunter is very different from the usual Space Wolves we've seen over and over again in Codex: Space Wolves and the multitude of White Dwarf magazines. 

They are.. darker. Blue-er. 

Here's a "collage" with some Pre-2012 Paint Change Space Wolves, some Pre-2012 Paint Change Ultramarines and Pedro Kantor. 

Spot the Differences

Now, here's a curious questions: Is this new Space Wolf scheme going to be the NEW studio paint scheme for Space Wolves? What's going to happen with the "baby blue" Space Wolves?

Painted Grot Tanks!

Hey there. Super excited to share some pictures with you guys. Today I finished painting two Grot Tanks for a friend's birthday gift and it felt really good not having to paint space marines, power armor, fur or anything Space Wolves related. I know, I know, this blog is "Wolves for the Wolf God" after all, but even the greatest Wolf Lord of them all needs to kick back and let some servitors give him a foot rub, right?

"Oi, wut is dat flashy fing??"

Jack's birthday is today, so me and a few guys from the store decided to surprise him with a painted squad of Forgeworld's Grot Tanks! Now, the reason we decided to give him Grot Tanks was pretty self-explanatory: Jack loves his shooty metal coffins. A lot. He even rides in one from time to time, pretending to be a German officer or something. Very surprised he doesn't play Flames of War.. But! Jack plays Imperial Guard. Jack hates Orkz just like any I. G. player should... and thus the Grot Tanks. It is funny and now Jack will have to use them in the Apocalypse games he loves so much just because the lil buggerz look so darn kool and deadly.

I know I don't show you guys a whole lot of painted models on this blog, so now you'll get to see my painting skills in action. I really like using many watered down layers of paint, so painting with "washes" and glazes to create verdigris and rust is one of my favorite things to do. It is easy and fun and you can always walk around and watch people play while your models are drying. The first model I painted was the "French" Grot Tank. I don't know my tanks but from what I've heard all of the Grot Tanks are actually based off of real old tanks?

"French" Grot Tank

Decided to go nuts with this one. It had been a while since I had the opportunity to paint an Ork vehicle and I had forgotten how much fun it is to drybrush, wash and then do battle damage. Decided to do plenty of rust and paint some sections blue. For my rust I water down Vermin Brown and apply it where it makes sense for rust to form. Using water I control its flow and transparency. Second layer is the "fresh" rust achieved by watering down Blazing Orange and going over the Vermin Brown.

Grots, like Frenchmen have low Ld values..

One of Jack's tanks has "Will break for beer" or something like that written on it, so I wanted to reference it on the side of this lil tank. "Stopz Fer Wine" is both Frenchy and Orky, don't you think? Also, the obligatory DAKKA. The verdigris (the patina formed when copper, brass or bronze is weathered and exposed to air or seawater) is simply watered down Hawk Turquoise over Dwarf Bronze that was previously washed with Badab Black. Telling you, washes = liquid talent.

The French flag was then painted on one of the side plates. Blue, white and red are important in Ork kultur, so it only made sense! And there you go, a French Grot Tank!

The second Grot Tank was to be more simple. I wanted to paint some more verdigris and definitely wanted to have tons of blood on the front. I mean, with them spikez this vehicle was just askin' for it. The first layer of blood is supposed to be the coagulated, scab part of the massacred victim, so Scab Red it was. To make sure the first coat was thick and had texture, a standard brush was dipped in Scab Red (no water was added) and then brought a few inches away from the model. You want to get close to the brush and then blow on it, almost like you are spitting. You won't have a lot of control on the splatter and even I got a little more blood than I was looking for... but in the end it looked great!

The second layer of blood is the older blood, but not as old as the first layer. Here we use Red Gore. This time a tank brush was dipped into a 2/1 Red Gore and water mix and then using your fingers you gently flick the bristles of the brush, splattering blood on the vehicle. Let it dry and then it is time for the fresh blood. This time we are going to be using a 2/1 Blood Red and water mix and do the same thing.. Apply a generous amount of Gloss Varnish to make it shiny and nasty.

The tank got a quick freehand of the Bulgarian flag.. just because. The grot driver was then given a white hat and red pants to match the tricolor of the Bulgarian flag. No silly slogans this time, just lots of verdigris and rust allowing for a simple, yet charismatic tank.





Here ate the other two Grot Tanks that were painted by the store's manager.

The Führer's Grot Tank.

The uncanny resemblance to Hitler is uncanny.

Unaffiliated Grot Tank..

... with jungle AND urban cammo. You never know where you're going to fight!

So.. Grot Tanks. Fantastic models with tons of cool little tongue-in-cheek details and a lot of ways to paint them. Definitely a great addition to any Ork army as long as your opponent lets you use them... And if he does not, then he is a mean jerk who cannot appreciate the killy powa of da Grot Tanks!

All of 'em!

New Savage Orc Boyz? *jaw drops* + [Adepticon 2011 Team Progress Update]

Today our store got the Black Box containing the new Orcs and Goblins Army Book, the new Savage Orc Boyz and the Arachnarok Spider. I'll be honest - I've been trying to stay away from Fantasy. For the longest time I was always busy with 40k and on the few occasions I got to play against people with friends armies I was pretty satisfied, yet not inspired enough to start an army of my own. People have been bugging me to start an army for the longest time too.. For my previous birthday I got a bunch of Skaven and was about to start my own clan Moulder with tons of Rat Ogre's aaand Hell Pit Abominations. But that never happened and I just sold/traded them on eBay. I got a nice trade for my last remaining 40 clan rats = got a badly painted Stompa!

Enter the Savage Orc Boyz!

 I... I was.. so happy when I saw the new Savage Boys. They are perfect. Orc skins is so much fun to paint and the lack of tons of straps, shirts and jackets to paint make them even more attractive. I always thought that the Ork Boyz were a pain in the neck to paint, especially because I never bother with painting heads and arms separate and everything eventually ended up being in the way of the paintbrush. But the Savage Orc Boyz! So bright! So much bones, so many possibilities! Look at them.. Definitely the best Orc/Ork models Games Workshop have ever sold.. I saw the kits today and there are so many weapons and other gubbinz to choose from. The Big Stabba? Why would you ever opt out of it? It is death on a stick..

Now, I know that I have plenty of things to paint. Those Space Wolves I have won't pant themselves, you know? I am planning to purchase a box of Savage Orcs and not open it until Adepticon is over. Or I'll try not to open it. How's that? I will be very careful about this project. I will only buy things that I'm ready to paint and will spend plenty of time on each model. I don't plan on having a horde army.. Maybe something in between. Like.. a smallish horde of elite guys and then some little guys. Here are some things that I'll have to change/think about/figure out:

Obsidian arrowhead!

- Figure out whether I want to run them with Spears, extra Hand weapons or Shields? Bows are out of the question.
- Will have the Big Stabba in every unit.
- Figure out a paint scheme. I definitely love the bright colors so I'll wait for some GW and blog articles.
- The stone weapons I plan on painting like obsidian. Probably Chaos Black with a light drybrush, white highlights and then gloss varnish. Or might use the Black Undercoat paint from the Paint Set. Then I'll sprinkle dried and fresh blood using Scab Red and Blood Red.
- They will start without tattoos but I will add tattoos to each squad when they prove themselves in battle. The more distinguished and successful a squad is, the more tattoos it will get.
- Will learn to be patient and paint the heads and other detail-obscuring pieces separate.

Other units to take will be Savage Boar Boyz, Goblin Wolf Riders including the new Goblin special character that makes them better at shooting (BS4 and other dakka!), definitely love new Savage Orc Shaman on Boar model so I'll have to pick it up at one point on another. Not sure what else as I was only able to peruse the army book and I am not that familiar with Warhammer Fantasy in general. The new Squig herd thing is pretty interesting too, and a pretty big unit of Goblins with Fanatics (with BIG skulls instead of chained metal balls) sounds pretty darn good to me.

Definitely a unit of Black Orcs that I'll need to convert somehow to make them look like Savage Orcs. I'm thinking that there should be a way to make their armor seems as if it was made from obsidian? Will have to research that. Maybe some very carefully placed Citadel Water Effects, Undercoat Black?

Team Razorback Spam Adepticon 2011 Progress:

- The pink foam part of the display board is not being glued to the wooden board with some PVA glue with.. hm... 8 Warhammer Fantasy Rulebooks and a Yellow Pages book sitting on top for some support.
- Met today with the guys to make sure progress was being made. We are doing different steps, but finishing on time definitely still seems possible.
- Started painting the faces of all the Space Wolves I own. Thinned layer of Tallarn Flesh, followed by a wash of Devlan Mud and then a 1:1 Tallarn Flesh and Elf Flesh mix was applied leaving some of the darker areas. About 50% have the 1:1 mix applied to them, the rest were washed before we had to call it a night.


- Still need to do some touch ups on the 4 Rhinos, Vindicator before I prime them Chaos Black and airbrush them with 2:1 Shadow Grey and Space Wolves Grey.
- Still need to prime and work on my 5 Thunderwolves.
- Still need to finish Skarvald's backpack and prime him.

Getting there!

Our Space Wolves Adepticon 2011 army is slowly unfolding. Pretty much everything has been built -
Last night I help one of my team mates to build his 10 Grey Hunters. He still needs to build his only Rhino and then he has to fix his warped Space Wolves Rhino doors. Vince has already built his Rhinos and will also need to put the doors on his two Rhinos. Other than that all Thunderwolves have been built... except my Wolf Lord on a Thunderwolf.

Yesterday I finished building the 2 remaining Long Fang members with Missile Launchers. I had just enough actual missile launchers but was missing the supporting hands that hold the weapon in place. Instead I used bolter hands and put a small missile in each as if they were loading the missile launcher. Looks pretty good! I also drilled the muzzles of all of my bolt guns and bolt pistols. That was like 40 drilled miniatures and some of them had a bolter and a bolt pistol, tee hee! And then I primed them. That took a while. I'm a perfectionist when it comes down to priming my models and I revisit every miniature to make sure that it has been properly sprayed. I must have primed around 60 models that day (I am responsible for assembling and painting two out of the four 1,000 pt. armies). And those were just the infantry models. I will prime the Thunderwolves and vehicles later - maybe when we are done painting the Grey Hunters and Long Fangs.

I still need to build one more Rune Priest and add some jib-jabs to my Rhinos and my Vindicator. We should start spraying Shadow Grey on the models pretty soon. 

Jacked up and good to go!

These past days I realized I am pretty much done with building Space Wolves for my Adepticon 2011 team. All that is left for me to build is a second Rune Priest, a second Long Fangs pack and my Wolf Lord on a Thunderwolf. Of course, I have been helping my other teammates with their projects too and I did build a Grey Hunter or two for their parts of the list.

And then it really hit me. I had been building models and playing small games for the last three or four months without doing any considerable amount of painting. Part of the problem was that we didn't have a paint scheme to play around with and we never really sat down to come up with anything.
The thing with Space Wolves is that people paint them so differently. That's great! Also, a lot of people seem to be split between having really grey marines... or miniatures with prevailing light blue on them. Honestly, go look at some pictures on any forum and for each post you will see a brand new way to paint Space Wolves.
The paint scheme that I tried to find (and when I did I always disliked a few steps or my teammates didn't like it) was something in the middle - blue with enough gray to make the models look damaged and grizzled. I wanted the power armor to be bright enough so that  any battle damage was visible and just blue enough to contrast with the orange on the model.

This Saturday I picked out a test model from my case. In this case it was this poor Grey Hunter who received a Storm Bolter (making him a Wolf Guard, I guess) before I had any idea what the cool looking weapon was. It was a busy day and around the paint bar there were some really good painters so I started asking them how they would paint Space Wolves. I shared what I needed and I more or less received it. I slowly started painting the miniature and the more I painted, the more I liked it.  I was not giving it my 100%, but I tried to put in enough effort to make it look nice and see if my teammates would approve of it. In the end, I was really happy with the result.
Now, obviously the model is not completely done. I still need to finish the shoulders and weapons, maybe even play around with the fur. When this is done I will start painting battle damage - chipped paint on the armor, mud, grease, etc. 

Space Wolves Paint Scheme MKI

"Huh? What is this Terran green stuff?"

Undercoat - The miniature was primed Chaos Black.
Base coat - The whole model was covered in Shadow Grey. The shoulders was painted Mechrite Red and the weapons dry-brushed Boltgun Metal. The whole model was then washed with Badab Black.
Power Armor - After the model had dried, I painted Shadow Grey over it, carefully leaving some darker areas where different pieces of the armor meet, the recesses, etc. to give it some depth. Then I slowly started to mix Shadow Grey and Space Wolves Grey in layers. First it was a 2:1 ratio over the whole model, leaving some of the previous layer, then a 1:1 around the edges and where the light was hitting the model. Finally, a highlight of Space Wolves Grey was done on the whole miniature.
Shoulders - When the Badab Black dried on the Mechrite, I added a 1:1 Mechrite and Blood Red mix, leaving the darker red around the edges. A final coat of pure Blood Red was applied over the previous layer.
Eyes - The eyes were painted Chaos Black as a foundation over whatever had gotten on them while I was painting the power armor. Mechrite Red was painted, leaving the black around the edges and then Blazing Orange was applied over the Mechrite Red. A fine, thin line of Skull White was then painted in the middle of each eye and then the whole thing was painted with 'Ard Coat.
Fur - To contrast a little with the power armor, the fur needed to be slightly orange. Scorched Brown was appied as a foundation. After that dried I dry-brushed two heavy coats of Vermin Brown, then washed with Devlan Mud. This was followed by a light dry-brush of Bleached Bone and then some Skull White around the tip of the tail.
Weapons - Simply Boltgun Metal washed with Badab Black and then highlighted with Chainmail.
Golden details - Calthan Brown then Burnished Gold (because I didn't have Shining Gold). This was washed with Devlan Mud and then a second coat of Shining Gold is to be applied.
Skulls and teeth - Calthan Brown and then a Bleached Bone dry-brush. After a Devlan Mud wash I touched up with Bleached Bone again and highlighted with Skull White.

I really like it and so did my teammates. I like the subtle blue and orange contrast, how realistic the eyes look and just the color of the power armor in general. I need to work on better brush control (I'm coming from a year of playing and painting Orkz, remember?) and highlights on the armor, though. I am still getting used to it and need to learn about the separate pieces. Though, when we actually do paint our Space Wolves a lot of these steps will be simplified by our nifty Citadel Spray Gun. We are going to paint some more test models each and see if we can add or change anything, but for now this seems to be the first step to painting our army.

Unpainted Unz Don't Go Anywhere!

Nothing interesting as of yet, Brothers! ;_;
STILL trying to come up with a slightly brighter, yet grim-looking paint scheme for our Space Wolves. In a week out local Games Workshop store is going to start a campaign that my friend suggested and I will unleash a 2,000 pts. Space Wolves army featuring..... 3 full squads of Thunderwolves.. including 2 Wolf Lords riding on their trusty Thunderwolf mounts.

For now, I have a badly painted Stompa soaking in a bucket of diluted Simple Green. Got it in exchange for 40 Skaven Clanrats. How's that for an awesome deal? I cannot help but picture a disappointed Big Mek who's waiting for a few acid rains to strip the horrible paint-job on this gargantuan scrap of metal.... Oh, man.. I still have to prime AND paint my first Stompa. I'm also going to scratch-build a Lifta Droppa for this bad boy, because the Lifta Droppa is the epitome of everything Orky!