Welcome to the second instalment of my “collecting an army” series. In the first part I spoke about making the decision of army selection and Kirby very kindly put up a poll on the site asking for peoples opinion on what army I should collect from the options of a Tri-Tervigon Tyranid list and a Loganwing Space Wolf list.
The poll ran for a week but due to time constraints I had to purchase the army prior to the poll finishing! At the time of purchasing the army the Loganwing list was in the lead as such this is the army I purchased, at the end of the poll however the Tyranid list was in the lead so apologies to those who were expecting to see articles concerning a Tyranid army!
The list that I opted for was as follows:
HQ
Logan Grimnar, The Great Wolf – 275
ELITES
Lone Wolf, Terminator Armour, Stormshield, Chainfist – 85
Lone Wolf, Terminator Armour, Stormshield, Chainfist – 85
Lone Wolf, Terminator Armour, Stormshield, Chainfist – 85
TROOPS
10 Wolf Guard, 1 Combi-plasma, 2 Terminator Armour, 2 Cyclone – 275
5 Wolf Guard, 1 Terminator Armour, 1 Cyclone – 135
5 Wolf Guard, 1 Terminator Armour, 1 Cyclone – 135
4 Wolf Guard, 4 Combi-plasma, Drop Pod - 127
4 Wolf Guard, 4 Combi-melta, Drop Pod – 127
HEAVY SUPPORT
6 Long Fangs, 5 Missile Launchers – 140
6 Long Fangs, 5 Missile Launchers - 140
6 Long Fangs, 5 Missile Launchers – 140
Total Points Cost – 1749
The list is probably not the best I could have written for 1750 pts but this is the list I decided to use. I placed an order for two boxes of Space Wolf Terminators and four boxes of Space Wolfs in power armour, and then came an issue...
As you can see from the list, I required 15 power armour space means with missile launches, after scouring every Warhammer 40k website I could think of I was unable to find sufficient numbers of SM missile launchers.
I went away to have a think and thought it wouldn't be that difficult to convert Imperial guard heavy weapon team missile launchers onto power armour space marines and, as such, I bought 15 of these! I also realised that the SW terminators box does not actually come with a CML unfortunately, as such, I ordered four IG Sentinel Missile Launchers as these looked interesting and somewhat similar to a Cyclone, I also purchased four melta guns to convert into Combi-meltas as the power armour SW box does not come with a melta for some unknown reason.
After a few days all the bits and pieces arrived. I decided that I would base the models on slate and then later make a snow effect on them, so I went to the local building/gardening centre and purchased a 300 x 300 mm slate which I would smash with a hammer to use for the basing material.
Fig 1: here are all of the bases with the slate stuck on!
Fig 2 – 3:
Here’s the wolf guard with bolt pistol and close combat weapons, the long fang pack leaders had not been constructed at this stage.
Fig 4:
These are the wolf guard in tactical dreadnought armour with cyclone, as I mentioned earlier the cyclones are actually missile launchers from the imperial guard sentinel box and I really like how they look.
Fig 5:
These are the three lone wolves, the left arm chainfists are as they come but the stormshields are also supposed to be on the left arm and as such a bit of playing about was done to make this work, I’ll include more detailed pictures of how I did this in the painting article!
Fig 6 – 8:
These are the long fangs with missile launchers. As previously discussed the missile launchers are from the imperial guard heavy weapon teams and as such there was an element of conversion required in order to make these models work and not look ridiculous. In the end I came up with three different poses and I will explain in the next article diagrammatically how these poses are achieved, essentially there is a sort of resting and looking for a target poses, a sort of looking like a pimp pose and a resting the missile launcher on the left shoulder pose. I really like all three and I don’t think it’s that noticeable that these models are converted which is always the intention!
Fig 9:
These are the five combi-plasmas simply made by chopping down a plasma pistol and whacking it on top of a slightly cut down bolter. I like ‘em!
Fig 10:
And here is the big boy, Mr Grimnar himself, this shot shows him pre-stormbolter. I am aware that logan doesn’t actually have a powerfist but he can use his axe as one and powerfists look cool so I modelled him with one!
You will note the lack of long fang pack leaders, combi-melta lads and drop pods, alas I did not taker pictures of these models pre-painting so you will have to wait!
I learnt a few lessons from this building phase:
1) Slate flooring tiles are VERY resilient, I might need a better hammer!
2) Given the sheer volume of heads, weapons, accessories in the SW boxes it is somewhat frustrating that they are let down by lacking some wargear options (cyclone and melta).
3) IG missile launchers can be converted relatively simply onto SM power armour.
4) It always takes longer building models then I think it will!
Tomorrow I will photograph the whole army minus the display base and endeavour to explain how the painting was achieved (I painted the whole army in 5 days), until then, ta ra! xx
