Long in the Fang (Part 4)

Hello. As I write this Warhammer 40,000 is about to enter a new era with it's 8th edition soon to be launched upon the gaming world. It will be the most radical change in the ruleset since the transition from the 2nd to 3rd editions. From everything* I have seen so far, I think I am really going to like these rules and I am excited for their release.

Meanwhile, I have a game lined up soon in which I will play the Space Wolves for the first time in 7th edition. Despite the fact that I consider them one of my Primary armies, I just wasn't excited by their codex and once again realized the way I liked to play them wasn't really supported in the codex, but instead the obvious "new" units were clearly given "win button" favoritism. Which is fair enough I suppose, but at that time I was at a very strained place financially and couldn't invest in adding new units. So the Wolves waited. Oh yes, I almost brought them out when the Warzone: Fenris Campaign kicked off but I just couldn't break away from the Chaos stuff I was having fun with.

Coming soon will be their first, and likely their only, 7th ed game. This awakening can be attributed to multiple influences: Shadow War Armageddon encouraged me to dig out my Space Wolf Scouts, Kushiel has been goading me for many months for a showdown against his Lions, and (as I previously stated) the approaching new edition. Digging them out and looking over my army I find a lot of projects that were half started or mostly complete that I never finished for some reason or other, and I am invigorated to get back to them. Click on the Space Wolves label and you'll see some of them (Rhinos, Whirlwinds, Wolf Guard, Drop Pods, Fenrisian Wolves, etc.)

One of these projects is my Long Fangs project. In Long in the Fang-part-one. I reviewed some of my older Long Fang models and their color schemes. I considered this a completed project at the time but in hindsight I believe I was kidding myself (Also there was no way to foresee the increase in base size up to 32mm). Earlier today I found myself reviewing them for the first time in a long time

Long Fangs assembled.

I am still very pleased with the models I added to this unit a few years ago, but I have been pondering expanding their unit with options that could let me split them off into additional units if I chose to. They are quite versatile and tend to kill more things than a more expensive tank would in their place.

Some of these models, and their paint jobs, are showing their (err, my?) age just a bit. Take this guy:

So old his base dropped off.

This guy was my original Long Fang Squad Leader. He needed to be "wolfed up" at the time so I added a power axe and sculpted on a beard. This was my first ever attempt at using epoxy putty as a sculpting medium. At that time GW wasn't selling it but they were talking about it in White Dwarf, so I sought it out. I found the epoxy putty in the plumbing section of a local hardware store. It did the job, but it wasn't nearly as user friendly as Greenstuff but the real down side is that it seriously stank! Anyway, he turned out OK even if he did end up looking more like a Mennonite leprechaun than a space viking.

If I do restore this model I am unsure if I will keep this head or not. I will still need to fix that axe regardless of whatever I decide to do with him.

Heavy Bolter.

Ah, the classic plastic heavy bolter! This was available in the original Space Dwarves plastic boxed set but I ordered a few from GW mail order back in the day just to get a few additional weapon options. This particular model had a bolt pistol in his left hand but it busted off at some point over the years. He was posed to appear to be firing the pistol while holding the heavy bolter in a rest postion. As the '90s thundered forward GW upped the size of their heavy weapons leaving this weapon to appear strangly small.

Also, the heavy bolter had to be the most reworked weapon design in 40k history.  It last appeared similar to this in the Space Crusade boxed game before settling into today's familar design silhouette during 2nd edition.

Las Cannon.

Although this las cannon also suffers from the original smaller size, the silhouette and design of the weapon still conforms to later designs. I like this particular model as it was one of the first Space Wolf models that I painted that I felt confident about how to paint it. He was definitely a stepping stone on the path my Space Wolf paint style would eventually evole into.

The missile launcher marine above is among the first 10, possibly 5, models that I ever painted. The yellow stripe on the helmet is a bit of a give away in that regard, as that was a common thing to see on early Rogue Trader era marines.

This next guy is among the last I painted in this style. Comparing the two you can see that my technique was cleaner and more confident at this point and I was experimenting more with tones as layers. Despite the fact the the 2nd edition Codex: Space Wolves was the current book at the time I still wasn't quite ready to shift my Wolves over to the heavier "baby blue" look that the models in that book had.

A note on the missiles: even today the typical option for missiles in a game of 40k are Frag and Krak (somes called Super Krak) missiles. I wanted to make this distinction apparent on the models so I made the Krak missiles red with yellow bands and the Frags yellow with red bands. In those days there was whole list of additional missile options, and one of these guys has a green set of missiles to represent that. I think they may have been intended to be Anti-Plant missiles but I don't really recall. We'll just say they're Flakk missiles from now on.

And yes, these are detachable. If you built your Imperial Space Marines correctly, and carefully, it was possible to make the missile launchers removable.  Although one of these loosened up in time and requires a bit of blu-tac to hold it in place.

The point of this is that my oldest models no longer look right with my newer ones. The original Space Wolf scheme is no longer favored at GW and was further retconned out by those heretics who write the FW 30k books (Dark grey -bah, that might as well be Luna Wolves!). I will likely experiment with repainting a few models just to see if I like my current style on them better or whether I should just leave them be. After all, I do have a lot of unassembled and unpainted plastic marines I could just move onto anyway, but these classic RTB01 marines have always appealed to me. Believe it ot not, my original paint jobs were beginners attempts at following the steps in the Space Marine Painting Guide from 1989. Figuring out how to thin my paints was something I did on my own as these paint guides were somewhat lame at explaining how to it.

Step by step painting Space Wolves in '89.

What follows was the original iconography guide, which would be totally ditched 2 years later in the Space Wolf White Dwarf lists of '92. These icons were challenging for the average painter to paint and next to impossible for a beginner to do. Which is why my old Space Wolves almost all have blank shoulder pads.

That is all for this ramble, more wolf stuff will be appearing here in the future.



*Admittedly I am having a tough time accepting the Primaris Marines into my paradigm.

2013 in review

Hello 2014! Happy New Year!

This year I wanted to review what I think are some of the highlights of the past year as far as my personal hobby accomplishments are concerned, and make a projection of what I foresee 2014 will bring.

The Wolves return to Fenris 

A year ago today, I came back from a trip visiting my friends in Cincinnati (and waging war) to discover that The Bink had made a magnificent gaming table for me! It was an awesome Christmas present and we spent 2013 using it for Warhammer 40,000 games, as well as Roleplaying games (Dark Heresy and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd 3ed) and board games (Battlemasters, Settlers of Cataan, etc.) and card games (Bang!, and another that I suck at...LOL). A year later and I still treasure this gift. Thanks again Bink!

Big table with shelves on the inside of the legs. 

By the end of January of 2013, I had acquired my brother's old Ultramarine army which are some of the earliest models that I ever painted (Circa 1990-ish). Getting them updated and into games of 6th Edition Warhammer 40K was quite a lot of fun and I ran them a few times in 2013 and usually had fun using tactics and options that my usual Space Wolves lack. I have yet to run them under the new Space Marines codex however, but aim to do so soon. Also, I am currently painting a "new" Captain model for this army, and figuring out a way to update the models in this army without resorting to completely redoing them.

Old Ultramarines!

 Last year I also ran a Tyranid army...well, genestealers really, and although it was a lot of fun I am now looking forward to the new codex which is supposed to be out this month before I do any additional work on this army. We'll see what the future holds for these guys. It was fun discovering how tasty Imperial Guard are though...

One gun and LOTS of claws.

 I finished painting a Long Fang squad that I am still very fond of. In fact I haven't left them out of a Space Wolf game yet. For Xmas the legendary Warfrog gave me a ton of the 2nd edition plug-and-play marines including 10 more missile launchers. My dreams of Long Fang spam are about to come true! Muhahahaha!)

I don't think that plasma pistol has been fired yet...

 2013 also saw the first Dark Angel paint-jobs by me in over a decade. These are the plug-and-play models that come in the current 40k paint set. I indeed to do more with these guys soon, as I recently doubled up on the Dark Angels from Dark Vengeance.

Dark Angels

A lot of my summer and early autumn was dedicated working on my Warhammer Fantasy Orcs, which are pretty much playable at this point, I just need to get them portable and arrange some games... This army still has a lot of work to do, but while I was painting these guys I was also dabbling on some 40K models, which inspired me to start playing Orks in 40k again. Funny how that works, huh?

Waaagh!

I turned in 40 in 2013. I concept I am still in denial of. I tell you, playing these games and engaging in this hobby really does help to keep one young! LOL I do have to say nothing makes for a more humbling outlook than having your brother watch as you use his old army in a birthday bloodbath against Tau-dar. Our ancestors were weeping...

40K on your 40th! What a great day! Thanks again to all for making it a special day for me! 

Another special event that coincided with my birthday was meeting my old friends from our High School days in England for a series of intense games of Space Hulk. That 3rd edition was such a great set and I honestly believe GW has made a critical error keeping this game "limited edition".

I kept the 'stealers well fed on that weekend, except when I played them that is! LOL

Getting my Space Wolf Land Raider completed Land Raider before the 2014 was a nice project for the Holidays. You can find the links for that whole massive project on my Space Wolves page.

"Let's raid some land!"

Another fun finish for 2013 was having people contact me to tell me that Frontline Gaming used one of my Cypher pics (see below) in their Cypher Reviewed article. This was quite a pleasant, and flattering, surprise. Also, it was a good review of the Cypher dataslate which I still have yet to download. I am totally intrigued by the notion of incorporating him into my Space Wolves, not to take advantage of any benefits or whatever, but just to antagonize my Dark Angel opponents. :)

Cypher offers you his protection.

 So what does 2014 have in store for Neverness and his Chronicles? Well, in the next few months I will most likely be moving in with my girlfriend, and until we get my studio built, I will be hurting for space. So in the meanwhile, I will be cramming away on completing some projects as well as figuring out how to make my armies both portable, protected.and accessible. I don't foresee many 'construction' projects in this time, but I do foresee that individual models or units might be painted up. We shall see.

One project that I started on in December was work on my Chaos army, in particular my World Eaters. Only one model do I have finished (see below) which was painted many years ago and he is the standard that I hope to get these models up to. He's painted in a 2nd edition Chaos Codex Khorne Berserkers scheme, but I am OK with this as it has always appealed to me. Not sure how much progress will me made on this force in the New Year, but I would like to get Chaos up to a strong secondary, if not Primary, army.

World Eater.

I would also like to try to knock out some of the models that others have asked for me to paint for them, mainly so they don't get stored for heaven-knows-how-long during this move/transition. I hope to have a very productive January on both the model mini painting front as well as on my 2-D art, but I suspect it will also be a very busy month for me at work as well, so we shall see!

Meanwhile, I wish you all a Happy New Year, and thanks for your continued patronage of this blog!

-Joel (Neverness)

RT era Imperial Guard paint scheme on current era Cadians

You just got to love a title that only 40K players can understand, right? Yes, I painted up some of the current plastic Imperial Guard in the old Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader-era Necromunda Spiders color-scheme circa 1989.

 

OK let me expand on why I did this: a long time ago I showed off some of my pal's old Rogue Trader era Imperial Guard guys that I painted for him along with some of the models that he had others do for him as well. For the sake of professional anonymity I refer to him on this blog as 'The Doctor'. You can see those Imperial Guard models here. I have always loved that paint scheme, and in ages past when my brother was collecting IG, we agreed to paint his Cadians in this color scheme as well. I only ever did the one model and you can see him below.

The single painted metal Cadian in my collection.

He remained a test-bed for future color schemes, only that I painted him so long ago (somewhere between '97-'00?) that I either couldn't recall the exact paint combination or that one of the mid-tones is a GW color that dried up on me which there isn't a current analog for. Regardless, I was determined to try it. Spotting a fairly cheap 'plug and play' box set of 5 Imperial Guard troopers I figured it would make for a fairly quick experiment. It was around about this time last year, perhaps a few months further back, that I mostly finished these guys, but for whatever reason, I just didn't. In the next pic you can see one of these troopers behind a Long Fang that I completed back in February of this year (2013) to give you a clue as to the "smorgasbord" painting technique that is my painting station! LOL! 


"Finish me! Finish me!"

Slight digression: this pic was apparently overlooked when I did the Long Fang posts. You can see how I like to paint the components prior to assembly, and you can see the original Space Wolf decals along with the backpack where I hand-drew the Space Wolf logo. By the way, that orc next to the guardsman is to be completed very soon!

OK, back on topic: During my Thanksgiving break I wanted to finish something! Finishing Mad Dok Grotsnik was quite rewarding and I wanted to do that to something else. For the sake of doing something different, and because they were so close to being finished, I chose these guys. Just a few touch ups, and they were done.

"Finished and ready to kill!"

Funny thing is, it took me the longest to complete their transfers. I opted to stick with the 2nd edition era regimental organization that was laid out in the original Codex: Imperial Guard.

A glimpse at the 2nd Ed Codex Imperial Guard Regimental Organization table and I was set

I very much prefer this over the vague and lazy system that the GW design team has used since. You can't see it on the old Cadian at the start of this post, but he has a patch colored Yellow Company, Blue Platoon. I decided that all of my old metal Cadians will retain this scheme, but the newer style models will be part of a different platoon. I feel that this works great since that is how they are purchased in the current Codex (i.e. by the platoon). My Valhalla models will be part of the same company as well, but I haven't thought out what their companies will be yet.

The platoon I chose for these models was Red Platoon. So, what I did next was locate the appropriate decal sheet from my decades old collection of GW decals, and paint on the colors after gauging the size of the decal. I then transferred the decal (this always makes me cuss like a pirate). I then trimmed off any excess, before finally going over the clear parts of the decal with black paint to not only cover that clear area, but to cover the over-lapping color and to add additional bond to the decals. The next pic should help with making sense of the result of what I just described.



"Red Platoon lives!!!"

Using the Middenland Tufts on Mad Dok Grotsnik a few days before, I was really hooked on how well this looked and how easy they are to apply. I decided to not use static grass on these guys but only use a few strategically placed tufts. I thought this gave a more hardened battlefield look, and it also reminded me of the New Mexico desert (of which I have some rather fond memories of).

All grunts have to have accessories!

 I found a guy selling an IG bitz bin on ebay awhile back and scored a whole bunch of backpacks, arms, guns, etc. I painted up one of these to add to this unit just to break up the monotony of these push-and-play models (BTW-these guys suck in that regard: you have to glue their guns in if you want them to stay on during game play!). I am most likely going to be putting together a small force of British soldiers for Bolt Action (Gasp!) and I used this backpack as an excuse to play around with their color scheme. I think it turned out good.

What does the future hold with this unit and my Imperial Guard in general? I'm not sure at the moment. With rumors of them getting a new Codex soon, I'm reluctant to put the whole army together only to have to reorganize it like I seem to have to do the Space Wolves each time they get a new book. So I will hold off on them for now, although I want to take this Squad up to unit size of 10. The perfectionist in me (having seen the blown up photos while typing this post) wants to do some slight touch up on their guns. Otherwise I like how they look with this paint scheme. I do think future models will loose the yellow wing motifs and I will probably try out a metallic gold instead.

I hope you enjoyed; let me know if you think this works!

Long in the Fang (Part three)

The four Long Fangs completed in this round, ready for war.

This is the final part of this Long Fang series, that is, until I get around to painting more Long Fangs.
This part will feature the model that required the most work, the Squad Leader.

"I feel so dis con nect ed".

For models like this that can prove to be tricky to get to all the areas with a paint brush, I like to leave them in a semi-assembled state. In this model's case I left off the head, backpack, shoulder pads and melta bomb. This allowed me to paint all the areas of the model that might otherwise be difficult to reach if these components were already there.


If Hiveangel played Space Wolves. :)

This was the level I had brought the model up to prior to attaching the head. I used a really dark blue on the "plasma parts" of the plasma pistol, and used Ultramarine Blue as the mid-tone.



Aiming at you!

Leaving the head off allowed me to paint the area of the armor around where it would rest without spending a lot of time touching up the model. Placing the head so that he was kind of looking down his arm and aiming with the plasma pistol gave a lot of character and body language to the model.

Tin Bitz base coat

Tin Bitz was the base coat for what will become the gold sections. Also I have added the Space Wolf Gray highlight and finished the fur apron.

 Shining Gold added.

 Final highlights of white added throughout the model.

Flocked!

 Here is the model completed with all the components added.

Here you can see the highlights on the plasma gun, and the rest of the model. The melta bomb was painted to match the canisters on the multi-meltas that I recently painted as well. I added the decal to the shoulder pads before I glued them to the model. I find them to be a bit easier to work with doing it this way. Both of the decals in this pic are old 1st edition era decals. Of particular interest is the sergeant badge that I put on his left leg greave. I panted the yellow on the leg, and then placed the decal over it so as not to lose any detail that could happen had I attempted to 'color it in'. Due to the age of these decals I had to touch up the areas around the image to cover up the distorted color of the transparency. Apparently these old GW decals are not "acid free", and I suspect the new ones aren't either...


As per the 2nd edition Space Wolf Codex, I placed the Long Fang Squad Leader fanged red skull icon over the pack marking. However, while trying to reposition the decal on the shoulder pad, it tore! I lost most of the top of the skull, and I had to repaint it free-hand. Luckily I was able to get a fairly close color match to the decal.

That's it for now.

Long in the Fang (Part two)

Continuing on from Part One, we'll focus on Multi-Melta Guy, the only metal figure out the 3 models I recently painted for my Long Fangs. This will be pretty straight forward, so enjoy:

Base coat (shadow grey and base).

Listed in the Citadel Miniatures Catalogue 1986-1991 as SPACE MARINE ARMED WITH MULTI MELTA AND BOLT PISTOL (070121/47) this venerable old model was one of only 2 one-piece space marine models GW produced back in the early days of Warhammer 40,000. He gets major 'grimdark cred' for having more skulls on his shoulder pad than any other non-character space marine ...well, ever! I have no recollection of how I ended up with him. but he had been primed white and kicking around in the case with the other Long Fangs for a while now.



Base coat (complete)

As with the multi meltas that I have painted on other models I used Tin bitz as my base color for the barrel.

Mid coat

 For some reason I didn't take any pics at the early mid coat stages. Note that his right shoulder pad is highly unusual in that it is really small, just big enough to serve as a brace for the gun,  and that there was no way to put his chapter badge on it. Instead I decided to put his pack marking there.


Space Wolf Grey coat

 Here he is mostly done.


Finished and flocked

And here his is finished! On the multi-melta tip I painted the part closest to the base with gold, while washing the end of hte barrels with a black ink to give the sense that the gun has been emitting burning hot blasts at some point in the recent past.



Finished and flocked (side/rear view)

Here's the back pack. I found that the current (3rd edition +) style of back packs fit this model best. Also I found one with a flat plate which provided me with a place to put a chapter badge. I painted it at the same time that I painted Erik Axegrinder's back pack, and I discussed it on that blog post.

Interesting note about multi-meltas, and really most of the 40K weapons: Since the inception of the game, and the creation of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, GW has done an impressive job sticking with their original concept designs for their weapons (for the most part). I was working on the multi melta for my land raider crusader at the same time as I was doing these Long Fangs and the gestalt pattern as to what defines (at a glance) what multi melta is and looks like hasn't changed hardly at all since 1987! Even the fuel canisters are sort of in similar spots! I painted my a hot red color on both of the recent multi meltas.

Also note the 'army badge' on the right leg. I have mixed feelings about how that came off, leaning more towards 'like'... thoughts?

Thanks again for checking this out,
-

Long in the fang (Part one)

Flocked, finished and ready to fight!

Since as far back as last July I have been using Long Fangs with my Space Wolves. One of the few units in the current Codex: Space Wolves that improved over the previous Codex, and it has more to due with the points cost of the unit than anything else. The addition of Snapfire and Overwatch in 6th edition has only added to their strength. Looking back at the battles in which I have included them, and you'll see that more often than not they not only killed more than their share of points, but often survived the battle. I found in my collection two of the old 2nd edition missile launcher marines from the Warhammer 40,000 rules boxed set, and ran them with the old RTB01 marines that I had turned into Long Fangs way back around '95.

RTB01 marine with 1st ed. Imperial Guard lascannon

When the Longs Fangs were created as a unit type way back in the twilight months of 1st edition in White Dwarf magazine, I had to reorganize my existing units. Prior to this Space Wolves were little more than a color scheme for your Space Marine Chapter, but all Space Marines pretty much had the same list. I loved the new background and gladly incorporated into my models. The original models all have studded left shoulder pads while the newer Mk7 armored marines now had smooth shoulder plates with the chapter symbol now being presented on the left side. My solution was to put the pack marking on the left leg greave and leave the chapter symbol on the right shoulder. I thought this worked out well, even though I have never seen anyone else do this. The next step was to take the heavy weapons out of the Tactical Squads and form them into Longs Fangs packs, while the remaining Tactical Squads would become Grey Hunters. Despite the age of these guys, and my maturity as a miniature painter, I have a fondness for these old models and I hesitate to strip them down and rework them, so in the meanwhile I will simply add newer models.

The "new guys", base coats.

 I started off as I typical do.

• Clean up the model.
• Add "ground" to the base.
• Prime.
• Base coat
• Apply the layers (usually a thin mid coat, solid mid coat, thin layer coat, solid layer coat, and finish with a highlight).

The pic above shows these models at the base coat step.

While working on the two plastic missile launchers, I decided that a new Pack Leader was needed. The old model was armed with a powerfist, which proved to be a poor choice in game, and he was looking a bit worse for age than some of the other models. I also started to work on multi-melta guy as well. That model, along with the Pack Leader, will be shown in the later parts. For now, I will focus on the two missile launchers.

Knife guy. Mid-coat stage.

On this chap I simply added a Space Wolf knife. Nothing radical, but somehow it makes him immediately wolfy. Just to be sure though, I put a wolf tail on his missile launcher too. I decided to try painting the acquilla in a metallic color. Normally on the Space Wolves I have been painting the chest acquila in yellow/orange color which can be a real pain in the ass to get to a standard that I like an oftn frustrates me. I liked the color scheme I came up with on other models, vehicles mostly, and thought it could work well here.


Skull guy. Mid-coat stage.

On this guy, I attached a big wolf skull to his belt buckle, because that makes sense, right?


Skull guy. 3/4 stage.

 

 

Here's skull guy at the next stage, with the skull looking more boney and the acquila finished. I am pleased with the aquila here, and I think this is the solution to the yellow aquila dilema. 

Knife guy. completed.

Skull guy. Completed

The pics above show both models finished. Although it is difficult to make out, the original 1st edition Space Wolf Chapter markings were used on the shoulder plates. They have Army Badges on the right leg, which I will discuss more on the Multi-Melta guy's showcase in the Long in the Fang part 2.

Hope you enjoyed,