Monday, January 30, 2012

Painting Space Wolf Grey Hunters with From the Warp's Scheme

I was surprised on Friday that in the mail all of my Space Wolves that I had ordered from multiple places had all shown up.  This led to a weekend where I spent entirely too much time working on my Space Wolves.   This army is coming together fast.  On Friday I had 3 boxes of the GW Wolf Packs, 7 missile launchers, and a rhino come in the mail.

By Sunday evening when I finally put my brush down I had all of the models assembled, including 30 Grey Hunters, a Rhino and 11 Long Fangs.  I based and primed them all, put a coat of wash on them and then started to work on the Grey Hunters.  I was able over the weekend through spending most of Saturday evening (and most of the Firefly series) and painting into the morning to get the Grey Hunters 95% done.  They still need to have the bases done, some additional face washing and high lighting to go, and some weapon highlights, but they are about done.  I know people that paint a lot faster than that, but getting three full troops choices this far along felt like a great accomplishment.  This army will be at 2000 points and fully painted much quicker than any other army I've done. 


When they are done and bases I will post some much better pictures.  Here they are as a work in progress.












Thursday, January 26, 2012

Why Grey Knights made it okay for me to play Space Wolves

I've recently decided to pick up a Space Wolves army.  I found a scheme that I love, it's easy to paint, and it will be super cheap as my Son has most of a Space Wolf army that he really never got into.  A few pickups on eBay and I'll have an 1850 ready to go soon.

Space Wolves have always been a "back burner" army for me, one that I've wanted to collect but haven't pulled the trigger.  The main reason (and this is a moronic one) is because they are so chic in the competitive scene I just couldn't bring myself to pick up the army.  I've already got one army that does well competitively, my Imperial Guard. Even though I'd played the army in third, I just didn't want to be perceived as another band wagoner.

I've heard for a while that a lot of Space Wolf players have jumped shipped and are now running Grey Knights.  I've seen many articles in the blog-o-sphere that show the numbers of Wolf players at tournaments is slowly going down or even disappearing.   I've been planning on doing Tau next, though every rumor that had placed them coming out first/second quarter this year has pretty much been countered with what looks like Black Templars as the next release, so I've got a large hole in my hobby time to fill anyway.  I could have done another one of my back burner armies, like Tyranids, though I'd like to see how 6th plays out first.   The congruence of finding a great scheme and the climate change in the competitive scene made an easy decision for me.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Space Wolf Terminators using From The Warp Alternate Scheme are done

I finished the basing last night on the models I have been painting in a scheme I earlier posted about on From the Warp , and I got to a point where I want to move on to another unit.  I still see things I could do, though right now I think I want to move on to long fangs so I can get an 1850 painted in a decent amount of time.  This scheme is ridiculously easy and I think on basic marines and vehicles it will be just as easy.   If I had to guess I think, I spent about 8 hours in total on these models, and for me (a slow painter) that is pretty quick, especially for this amount of detail.   I am not the best painter out there, I try and get my stuff consistant, fully painted, and look good from a foot a away.  With this scheme I think I am easily surpassing that.  I am very surprised with how easy and how detailed this paint scheme came out.

I enjoyed this scheme so much that as I alluded to in the above paragraph, I am going to do a whole army in these colors.  I ordered some more space wolf packs from eBay last night and pretty quick I should have a great looking force of Space Puppies.

More pictures!!












Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Why Warp Time being nerfed isn't as bad as you think

The Chaos Space Marine codex is pretty thin on standouts,  the Demon Prince is one of the few must haves in the army.   It's a cheap, deadly, survivable hammer unit.  The biggest limitation in my experience is that you only get four attacks and for some combats that's just not enough to get the job done. Warp Time has always been a great way of increasing the damage output to at least a consistent level so that at least 3 of your hits will do some damage.

I was a bit irritated to see the nerf as the codex is far from top tier, why nerf one of the bright spots of this lackluster codex?  My CSM force isn't really meant to be that competitive, it holds it's own, but it is not anywhere close to as effective as my IG so I didn't stay upset for too long.  A few days after the nerf I played in a league game and I actually some benefit to warp time being nerfed.

Warp Time is an ability that you usually only used half the turns, as on your own turn you don't want to kill the unit you are fighting and expose yourself to fire, you use it on your opponents turn only (in most situations).   This means that I am paying twenty points for something that I only use a max of six times, and with most games the demon princes not always fighting every turn, more than likely only three times a game. After consideration, I just dropped Warp Time.  Between the two in my 1500 list I got 40 points back.

Those 40 points (because I wasn't quite 1500) let me throw in two more plague marines.  This meant my two plague marine squads went from seven models to eight models. Even though I lost an ability I really liked, the consolation prize was my troop squads got more resilient.  In the first game I played without Warp Time I didn't even really miss it.  Time will tell, but I have a feeling that GW's latest kick in the teeth to us faithful CSM players will feel more like a nerf bat than a boot.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Space Wolves Terminators - From The Warp Scheme Part 2

I spent most of the day watching football and painting up Space Wolves, and I have a ton of pictures to show off the scheme.  This is the scheme that I found on From the Warp and I am loving it even more in person.   I think the way I am doing it is a bit darker than the models on From the Warp though I still really like it.   I started this morning with models that I had primed and put a coat of wash on.  In the example what I would call "art paint" was used as a base coat, and the bottle I got just didn't work.  The coverage was awful, and I substituted Codex Grey and it worked just fine, due to mine being a bit darker then the models in the example.  Cleaning up and highlighting the models really helped make the wash pop.





Here are the models with wash and cleaned up areas with Codex Grey






 The cleanup really helps, especially on the large flat areas, like the backs.

 I then mixed a blend of skull white and codex grey to do some edge highlighting.  I didn't do as much highlighting as some models, though I did most of the top and major edges.  I really like the look.






 I began to paint the gold, bones, shoulder pads, etc.





 I finished up most of the details, and got to the point where I want to start basing them.  I am doing snow bases, so I put some sand down and after they dry I will paint with graveyard earth, highlight, add some grass, and then snow on top of that.  From reading tutorials online, as I've never done snow, I think they are going to look fantastic.