Here it is!  The tables all finished, Kev and I played a game on it last night.  We tied!

The surface was pretty easy to do.  I got an 8′ x 4′ pieces of plywood for $12 and then I bought 24 linoleum tiles for $.39 each.  2 cans of grey spray paint and a bit of wood glue.  All in all it cost under $30 bucks to make the surface.

The plans I got at http://www.drunkdwarves.com/?p=200 They are great gamers and this tutorial of theres was super easy to follow.

Now to start painting those wolves again!

I’ve spent my hobby hours most recently working on my gaming table.  I originally wanted to do a whole movie thing of the guys and me building a table… but guess who didn’t help…

So here is the table sans a top.  It’s study enough that I can stand on it and use the bar at the bottom to put my foot on!  I haven’t screwed the center beams in, because it will take like 2 minutes with someone helping me, but forever alone.  The rest of the table is done though.

Tomorrow I make a simple gaming surface and I get my nerd on!

Yup, Wolf Lord Rafe took an afternoon but turned out really nice.  I’m still having some problems getting my flash to not be to bright.  The fur looks more “plastic” in these shots than in normal lighting.  Here he is:

I originally intended to paint up my Blood Claws next.  The logic was simple… there are 15 of them, once they are done nothing else will take as much time!  Then today I played a game using Wolf Lord Rafe and his 5 terminators.  They just wouldn’t die!  So many saves made!  They would assault a unit, kill it in their turn and then be assaulting a new unit the round after!

So I think I’m going to paint them next… they deserve it!

I finished my first squad of Grey Hunters today.  The flash makes the highlights look much more contrasting than they are in natural light.  I really need to find a camera I can use every time and start figuring it out, rather than borrowing different ones each time I want to take a picture of my models.

Next up, my Wolf Lord in Terminator Armor.  Here’s my tentative 1850 list.

Wolf Lord w/Terminator Armor, Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield & Saga of the Beast Slayer

Wolf Priest w/ Saga of the Warrior Born

5 Wolf Guard with a Land Raider Redeemer w/ Extra Armor.  They each have different gear:  [2 Wolf Claws], [Heavy Flamer & Power Weapon], [Power Fist & Storm Bolter], [Power Fist & Storm Shield] and [Frost Axe & Storm Shield].

10 Grey Hunters, 2 w/Meltaguns & 1 w/Power Fist,  Rhino Transport

10 Grey Hunters 2 w/Flamers & 1 w/ Power Fist, Rhino Transport

15 Blood Claws 2 w/ Flamers & 1w/ Power Fist

Lone Wolf w/ 2 Terminator Armor, 2 Wolves, Thunder Hammer & Combi-Melta

Land Raider Crusader w/ Extra Armor

It’s mostly a mounted list.  Wolf Lord & Guard in Redeemer.  Claws & Priest in Crusader.  Hunters in reserve (to get objectives and push weakened units around) and of course a Lone Wolf cus they are super cool.

Still to be built:  2 Dreadnaughts with Drop Pods, BUNCH of Space Wolves in power armor and some scouts.  I should have plenty of Hunters and Claws as well as many other options.  Including 10 Skyclaws ect.  I just have all these kits laying around and I don’t know what’s left in them from all the kit bashing!

I haven’t been able to hop on in a bit and that’s because things have been pretty hectic around here.  I was able to get some progress done on my first squad of Grey Hunters.  They are about 90% done, all I have to do now is the highlighting.  I’ll have pictures up in the next day or two when I finish them.

In the mean time I thought it might be fun to talk a little bit about strategy and the Space Wolves WITHOUT special characters.  I have yet to see a “hard list” without Njal.  Don’t get me wrong, he isn’t bad… but really I think people are expecting him to do a lot more than he will.  You get one assault unit into hand to hand with him and he’s dead.

The only special characters I really see worth it are Canis and Grimnar.  Canis because the Thunderwolf Cavalry is a very serious hammer unit and he helps with that a lot.  Grimnar because he opens up some interesting army options, like jump, bike and terminator troops.  The rest are just to expensive for my tastes.

In many ways a Space Wolves army can functions similarly to a Grey Knights army.  It has hammer units that do the majority of the work.  The key difference is that these hammer units are much more varied.  My personal play style makes me want to use Troops with power HQ’s as a hammer.  I’ve got a few troubles with this, namely the transport capacity of the drop pod.    Instead I am learning to use my troops as a “clean up” crew.

I’ve been giving some thought to conversion possibilities for Thunderwolf Cavalry and I just think I am going to wait on them.  The official model will no doubt be incredible, and I can do my conversions off that in a few months or a year when it comes out.  It gives me something to look forward too.  That leaves them out as a “hammer” for me at the moment.  Bell of Lost Souls has plenty of information about the TWC though, it’s big discussion over there right now.

So here are the non-character HQ’s and the unit that I like to couple them with:

Terminators: Great in a variety of ways.  7 and a Lord/Leader in a Crusader makes for one hell of a hammer.  Support from troops allows it to sacrifice itself and the flexible troops do the mop up.  It can be kitted out to do a lot of different things all at once as well.  I may even run 5 and a lord in a redeemer.  It’s surprisingly effective against both hordes and elite armies.  This unit is best used to handle troops, stopping your opponent form winning.  Elite hard hitting squads will be able to do a lot of damage with power weapons to their low model count.  Storm shields are expensive, but if they are going to hunt anything with a power weapon it’s pretty much mandatory to have 2 in the unit.  The base terminator is only 33 points too!

Bloodclaws: Bloodclaws have so many wounds it’s disgusting.  Their major flaw (headstrong) goes away when you combine them with an HQ.  Toss in a Wolf Priest to give them preferred enemy and you have a unit that doesn’t NEED power weapons… but can have a fist anyway.  Coming in at 16 models for a full squad, they need a Land Raider if you want to give them a transport.  Even 9, however, with a Wolf Priest can do some damage coming out of a Rhino.  At the unit is only 350 points with a single fist (super cheap for what it does) and did I mention free flamers?  That’s 600ish points for one hell of a hammer, and it’s a troop.  There are just so many good things to say about it.  Kill a unit or two, then hunker down in cover for a tough to dislodge scoring unit.

Long Fangs: All the heavy hitters so far have focused on the assault.  The long fangs, however, are able to put out a lot of hurt down range.  Combined with a Rune Priest and you have even more ranged hurt and a unit that is in cover even if it can’t find any.  Combining the flexibility of a Rune Priest and the split firepower of long fangs gives for one strong 7 man ranged squad.  Razorback with a heavy bolter is almost a given as well.  Hammer ranged support!

Lone Wolves: Normally units this small are a problem come kill points… but not these bad boys.  They are cheap and can be built to handle a lot of goals.  Throw in some wolves and you have 4 wounds that can really put the hurt out.  A chainfist, combi-melta and 2 wolves gets you a guy running across the field at your opponents long range vehicles.  Give him a pair of wolf claws and send him HQ hunting.  Having a goal oriented unit that is designed to die is just a great hammer.

Just a few thoughts.  I’ll have pictures up of my Grey Hunters in a day or two.

My first unit is my Wolf Lord and his Grey Hunters squad.  He is going to have Saga of the Beast Hunter, used to represent his proficiency fighting against Nurgle Marines and Daemon Princes.  He is my “hammer” unit for the army, even though the army is really 4 hammers.  They also handle most of my close range tank hunting.  Against Orks these guys go for the Warboss, that sort of thing.

Every unit in the army takes a trophy from the first Chaos opponent they kill.  This ususally comes in the form of armor or a weapon.  Since the company is also rebuilding, they don’t have as much “flare” on them.  Their equipment is a combination of old battle tested space wolves gear, chaos marine trophy armor/weapons and newer replacement parts.

Rafe the Prince Slayer was built from a Space Marine Commander with space wolves bits added on.  I also took the Nurgle banner and put it on his base to give him a bit of scenic love and show off the nurgle fighting aspect of the character.  His chaos trophy is a bolt pistol.

So the unit of usurpers was made from a box of Space Wolves, some regular Space Marines and some Chaos Marines.  I have a ton of bits left over, easily going to be able to make my unit of bloodclaws with what’s in there.  Teh unit has a pair of meltaguns and a powerfist.  Oddlly, the Space Wolves box has no meltaguns in it, luckily the regular marines and the chaos marines each had one.  I’ll have to figure something out for my 2nd melta gun unit that I had planned.

Next up, painting them

So I finished the Land Raider.  Sorry I wasn’t able to document the last section, but the camera I was using was out of action for a bit.  Here are some final pics.

I lined the whole thing in Fortress Gray and then gave it a matte spray.  That’s really all I did, besides adding on a few storm shields to make it look more space wolves-ish.

Today was another smaller part of the Land Raider assembly, trying to get everything looking cohesive.  I started the day off by giving the entire Land Raider a black wash and setting it aside to dry.  I don’t think you guys need a picture of that.  I used Brazen Brass on all the bits that I eventually wanted to be gold.  I’m going to do a little weathering now, but the majority of that comes later when I spend an entire day making the model look really battle worn.

Once that dried I washed the entire thing black.  I gave the bronze a dry brush of shining gold and the grey parts a dry brush of Codex Grey.  The skulls got some Astronomican Grey (a foundation paint) as a prep for white.

By now the raider had dried.  So I dry brushed the entire thing Codex Grey to bring down the “grunge” factor of the wash.  I also did the skulls while I had the Astronomicon Grey and Skull White sitting out.

Then I glued the sponsons on, since they are to heavy to sit in place on their own without magnets.  I’m leaving the top of the Land Raider unglued so that I can show off the insides later on.

Like I said, really short day of painting :)  Next I’ll do the outer shell details, mainly the doors and gear details.

So today I’m doing the inner details on the Land Raider so I can put it together.  I started by using Enchanted Blue on all the screens and then got all the buttons with Ultramarines Blue, Snot Green, Blood Red and Blazing Orange.  The lights were done in snot green.  This is where I am at this point:

To make the screens look like they are actual screens I then took Enchanted Blue and mixed in an equal amount of Skull White.  I painted just the lower left corner.  Then I mixed in another brush full of Skull White and did a smaller portion of the corner.  Finally I used just Skull white on the very lower left portion of each screen.  The green lights were done using the same technique but subsituting Snot Green for Enchanted Blue and doing the center of the light bars.

I painted the seats black, and highlighted the edges with Codex Grey.  Then the trim and gold parts were painted with Brazen Brass and Highlighted with Shining Gold.  The parchment was painted Vermin Brown.  The parchment was then painted Bleach Bone.  The candles are done with Graveyard Earth.

The opposite side was done using the exact same process as the right.

The Engine is next.  I began by paiting all the piping Brazen Brass and giving it a black wash to make it look like engine parts.

The Screens and buttons were done as described above, as was the gold skull disk.  The purity seals were done like parchment, Vermin Brown then Bleach Bone.

Now I’m ready to start assembling it.  I left the top and the side sponson purposefully unglued so that  I could later remove them and show off the inside.  I may later glue on the sponsons though, and just leave the top removable.

Tomorrow, I paint the Flamers and the assault cannon!

Today’s task was to get the model primed and the initial basecoat of colors on.  This step turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would.  I began with a can of Krylon’s Primer Gray.  Normally I prefer GW stuff, it gives a smoother finish.  For the wolves though, I like the TINY BIT of roughing that Krylon paint gives.  It’s very very subtle and gives the models a grit to them.  This Gray primer also saved me a larger part of painting Fortress Gray over the Black Primer.

I chose to go with a “less blue” gray because the 13th company never changed it’s colors to the new bluer gray that Space Wolves use now.  It’s tough to get good coverage with Gray Primer, as it is exactly the same shade as the plastic.

Here is where I was at with the simple “everything coated” and ready for other base coating.

Please take note of the primer in the background (thats’s what I used) as well as the copy of White Dwarf.  Normally I don’t buy White Dwarf, but I had been into the game store twice in 3 days without making a purchase and I wanted to support my local shop.  Plus it is all about Space Wolves and there are some good painting guides for traditionally painted Space Wolves.  Anyway, I popped Dexter Season 3 into the DVD player and got started with adding yellow to the model.

I began with a coat of Inyanden Darksun.  It’s a foundation paint and gets me really good coverage on the parts I want to be yellow.  I made some mistakes, but luckily “Codex Grey” is the exact same shade as “Primer Gray” from Krylon.  I love having to make sure I use the right “Grey”.  Nice and easy, the main goal was to keep the lines as clean as possible.

Once all that was done I painted the tracks black.

I’m not 100% happy with how the yellow came out.  I watered it down to the point where is was tough to control and it still looks “lumpy”.  I don’t like the caked look on the larger flat areas so I’ll probably end up hiding them with something clever, like plasticard wolf heads or ruins.

Tomorrow I tackle the details and do the final assemble.  I’ll leave you with my final pic for the day, you can see my cat Megatron seriously considering drinking paint water.  About 10 seconds after this photo was taken I had to stop her from knocking over the glass to drink from it.