Man cannot live on 40k alone, AKA a visit to Mordheim

Well, I must say, that work has been crazy, and with Proms, Concerts, Dance Competitions, and me picking up a second job my hobby time has been extremely limited.
Luckily for me a few friends of mine started a Mordheim Campaign, so I dusted off my old Warband and into the depths of Mordheim I went. The adventures of Captain Kallilor continue!

Above you can see my old Warband, a group of Reiklanders which also doubled for a unit of Huntsmen in my old Empire army. I painted them a long while ago, but boy am I glad I kept them for just such occasions.

You can see above, that I went for numbers with limited equipment to start. I also really wanted to take advantage of the bonus to BS that Marksmen get so all of my Henchman are Marksmen.

Lets take a closer look at the members of Captain Kallilor's "Long Shots"

Center we have the good Captain himself, he is equipped with a Long Bow, Sword, and Dagger, and his hat is reinforced. He does suffer from an Old Battle Wound so occasionally misses a fight, but has a BS 5, and Quick Shot so is deadly with his bow. The feathers in his cap are his Lucky Charm and he never goes to battle without them.
To his left is Cpl Jonas and to his right Sgt. Armstrong who was so badly injured last evening that he has to rest awhile at the Inn and not partake in the Warbands next outing.

Above we have "Armstrong's Strong-arms" With a S4 they are helpful in the inevitable Close Quarters combat of Mordheim, and when forced into close combat they drop their bows and fight with sword and dagger. I have recently added a 3rd henchman to this group (he isn't painted yet, but is pictured below with the new group shot)

Cpl. Jonas' Squad of Marksmen, the "Broken Bows" these deadly marksmen hold my line with a BS of 5 they account for more kills than anyone else in the Warband.

The Young Bloods, "Fred and Charlie" (named after the two fighters from Fineous Fingers for you old Dragon Magazine readers) With Quickshot and more guts than brains these two are good for 2 things...1. getting themselves taken out of action and 2. wasting a lot of arrows.

My Warband has been doing me proud, and I have quickly swelled my ranks. Instead of upgrading Wargear, I have been adding as many new warriors as I can afford.

Above is a shot of my Warband as it currently stands. You can see that I have added a Wizard who has, you guessed it, "The Silver Arrows of Arha"
I managed to add one warrior to one of my Henchman Groups, Hired an Engineer with a Hochland Longrifle (a special character for this particular campaign) I bought a pair of Wardogs for some close combat support (who have taken a liking to Ogre meat) and of course my Freelance Knight "Sir Godfrie the Cowardly" who stood frozen and failed to charge the Ogre Warband on at least 3 occasions (failing his fear check every time)

Below I have one last shot, a picture of the guy who started it all many, many years ago back when Mordheim was just a series of White Dwarf articles I present the original Captain Kallilor


Well that's about it for now, I am hard at work painting my first Grey Hunters pack for my 2011 Space Wolf project and I promise I will have some updates on that project soon...

Slow Progress, but something is getting done...

Well finally another model done. Work has been absolutely crazy lately, and I haven't had much hobby time at all. Above you can see the latest Grey Hunter. As you can tell, I haven't changed my paint style much from my normal recipe for Space Wolves, this is because while I am doing a whole new Space Wolf army, the idea was to try to add to my collection and truly make my army suitable for Apocalypse games.


Here we have a rear view. I haven't decided if I want to put markings on the cloak or not yet.

Here we have a Close up shot of our new Grey Hunter.

Above a side view, this shows where I did a lot of the green stuff work, on the shoulder pad, and the entire right arm to the elbow.

Finally a picture of the three new finished models together. I know I've posted the other two before, but I wanted to give a group shot so you can start to get an idea for how this new army is going to look.

Space Wolves, working on the new list...

I just can't seem to make up my mind on exactly where to go with this list, so I thought I would post up my thoughts so far and look for some input.

Here are the must haves:

• Logan Grimnar (of course)
• Wolf Priest (to lead the Blood Claws)
• 10x Wolfguard 8x TDA, 2x Cyclone missile launchers and 2x Power fists. The power armored WG have a Combi-PG / Thunder hammer and Combi-MG / Power fist
• 9x Grey Hunters with a Plasma gun, Plasma pistol, Power weapon, Standard, Mark of the Wulfen. With a Rhino Transport
• 8x Blood Claws with a Flamer and Power weapon (Plasma pistol? Rhino Transport?)
• 6x Long Fangs with 5x Heavy Bolters, the Pack Leader has a Power Fist

That's the core of the list, and it is from here that I am stuck. Where do I go from here? I have plenty of points left (about 500 in fact).

A couple of things I am definitely staying away from is spam of any sort (I don't mind duplicating a unit, as long as its wargear is markedly different). I like the idea of taking Logan Grimnar and a wide variety of choices to represent a small fraction of his Great Co.

I could go with a Land Raider Crusader, and bulk out the Blood Claws, or take some TWC, or a Dreadnought.

So I'm all ears, give me your opinion

Mark of the Wulfen

Sorry about the picture quality, but it was 5:00 AM when I took these photos. I am quite happy with how the skin tones turned out. I know its hard to tell in the pictures, but there really is a more distinct highlight on the actual model.



I'm not sure what to do as far as tattoo markings, so I left him as is for now.
Well, time to get ready for work...

A modeling tutorial for my Grey Hunters

Thought I would do a quick tutorial on how I have modeled my Grey Hunters. Now, this is not a new conversion by any means. I did a few years back with my Space Wolves army, I have seen an entire Black Templar army modeled this way, Jawaballs has made some excellent looking Blood Angels with these bits, and another tutorial can be found on a Space Wolves blog (I'm going to have to add that to my following list, as I really like that site.

Anyways, I am posting mine here simply to show how I go about doing my version of this popular conversion.

Above you can see, I take the back half of a Chaos Warrior Torso, and make a mess of it with my Dremel. The grinder bit I have attached is the perfect tool for this job. I also cut the top half of the front of the Chaos Warrior apart from his legs (I like the full front torso, but I like the look the Marine legs give with this conversion better)

After I'm finished making a mess of things, I clean it up with some Green Stuff. I am not too concerned with how it looks at this point, I'm just trying to smooth it out a bit. Most of it will be covered with the rest of the model anyway.

I then attach the front, I should note here that I hollowed out the back of the front piece, as well as hollowed out the waist area of the back piece with the Dremel, this is to allow for a better fit for the legs. I also fill in the gaps between the front and back torso pieces with a little Green Stuff.

Using a small ball of Green Stuff, I put it on top of the legs of the Marine, then using my sculpting tool, I make a small Wolf Pelt around the waist. This fills in any gaps between the torso and legs, I then use floral wire as my pins for the arms.


The above two photos show the army attachment, the gap on the right arm will be filled with Green Stuff, I'll also bulk out the shoulder pad a bit.


I attached the Plasma gun, and the head, I had to use some Green Stuff here as well in order to raise the head to a level that looked and fit well with the torso.

I added a few bits around the waist where I didn't like the join, to hide any deficiencies, and here he is ready for his base.

I hope you all enjoyed this, please if you have any tips or comments for me, then fire away!

First model completed!

Wow! what a nice sculpt, but what an absolute pain in the ass to paint...

Space Wolves 2011

After the Colonial GT and after speaking with Chris "Jawaballs" and seeing his new Blood Angels, and some of his WIP for his new army, I got myself motivated to attempt to step up my game a bit.

What does this mean for me? a brand spanking new Space Wolves army of course!

Now, to do a new Space Wolf army, I need to set myself some ground rules.
1. It needs to have a new theme (I've already done Rhino rush, Drop Pods, and Biker heavy lists)
2. All new models, I have a sizable collection, but all of the models I currently have, I've already used in a tournament of one type or another. I need something new.
3. Conversions all around. This part is a bit tricky as the new Space Wolf models are great and not in need of much converting.

My current thought, is to do a Logan Grimnar army. Not an all Wolf Guard force, but one that does take advantage of his ability to use Wolf Guard as a troops selection. I want variety in the force while trying to have as many boots as I can on the ground. I also want to use lots of Wargear, and kit-out some squads. This is the Great Wolf's Great Company after all, and they should be equipped as such.

Normally I write a list, and then work on building the army. I have tried this approach several times already, but just can't seem to stick with one list that I want to build.

Here is what I consider "must haves" in the list so far:

• Logan Grimnar (Of course) I am going to convert my own model. The current one is great, but I am going to build my own, kit-bashing some plastics. His axe is going to be a double bladed Khorne Chain-axe
• A Long Fangs pack, max-size this group is old friends of the "Old Wolf" maybe even members of his original pack. They are going to all tote Heavy Bolters. This is a Space Wolf standard option with a twist (No missile launcher spam here). My hope is to use The Old Wolf's special abilities of giving Relentless or Tank-hunters to the pack to make the Heavy Bolters not just a good option, but a great one.
• A ten strong Wolf Guard pack all in TDA. This is the "Core" of the army. I normally go with Assault Cannons, so for a twist, I am going to go with 2 Cyclone Missile Launchers.
  
• A Grey Hunters Pack with all the goodies I can squeeze in
• A Blood Claws Pack
• A Wolf Priest

This should leave me with a couple of hundred points to play with. I have one pack of each of the Troops choices allowed in the Codex. I may try and do a Scout pack as well, I'll have to play with some more detailed lists to see what I can squeeze into this army.

Here are a couple of teaser pics,


Above you can see the start of my first pack, some Grey Hunters. This will be a pack of 9 led by a Wolf guard. Lots of kit-bashing and green stuff, I'm really trying to push my converting skills on this project.


Above we have the Wolf Guard he is armed with a Thunder Hammer and a Combi-plasma. I know, I know not the wisest of choices, but he just looks so damn bad-ass!
I used one of the Scibor models that I purchased at the Colonial, I purchased 4 different ones, so I have one for each of the packs that I have planned for this army to represent all of my Wolf Guard.

I will have more close up pictures of the other models soon, and I will put up some notes on how I made the models.