Vlka Fenryka in February

I aimed to have a full squad of MKIII marines done by the end of January but I unsurprisingly managed to get side tracked. Instead I have 2 MKIIIs, 4 MKIVs, Geigor Fell-Hand, and half a Rhino finished. This month I'm going to try and be a lot more focused and get some squads boxed off, aiming for a 500 point force from the space Wolves 40k codex. 

First up I'm going to have my first 5-man MKIII squad finished along with their accompanying Rhino transport. As well as these I've entered an event on Twitter encouraging participants to work towards getting a squad complete. I've entered a 5 -man Tartaros terminator squad and will have them done by the end of the month as well.

Aside from painting I've also started work on converting some more of my MKIIIs into more close combat focused soldiers. Taking inspiration from various pieces of 30k artwork I ordered a bunch of axes and shields from bitzbox.uk, originally a part of the Chaos Marauders set. I'm aiming to give this squad, which will probably end up as a squad of Wolf Guard, a more Viking aesthetic in order to move away from the modern Space Wolves obsession with over the top fur and wolf skulls.

The above photos are really good examples of the look I'm going for.  Although the marauder shields are a little bit smaller than those pictures, they still retain the same shape after some filing down and attach fairly easily to the MKIII forearm. They also allow the marine to keep hold of their bolter in one hand with the axe in the other.

I aim to have some pictures of a finished squad by this time next week so keep your eyes open, until next time.

January Update - The Wolves (and a Rhino) Descend on Prospero

I've slowly but surely started the hard slog through The Burning of Prospero, managing to paint up Geigor Fell-hand, a MKIII marine, as well as basing the Fenrisian Wolves I've had lying around for 18 months. My local GW has an event running in which you have to pledge to paint 2017 points of minis by the end of March. I put my name down to get my wolves done but I'm not confident I'm going to get anywhere near my goal. Either way it'll motivate me to get to work as I have a bad habit of starting a project and never finishing. 

Geigor was a bit of a pain to get finished and took some perseverance. I'd decided to paint him before gluing so I could get at the small details, which resulted in an hour of supergluing and fiddling about with limbs and weapons. In the end I'm quite happy with how he's turned out, especially his backpack mounted wolf skull and his gantlet, and think he'll be a fitting leader for my wolves.

Recently my uncle found a box stuffed with old sprues and lead minis in a charity shop and he sent them my way. After a quick look through it was clear a young child had been bought a truck load of minis and decided that maybe Warhammer wasn't for him. From what I can tell the box includes the old Assault on Black Reach box set, a set of SM Scouts, a Land Raider (which for some reason was coated in superglue and then dunked into sand), 2 boxes of SM Terminators, various lead characters and a Rhino still on the sprue (albeit minus the hatch) and a stack of vehicle and infantry transfer sheets. Not bad for just £20, and despite a lot of the minis having been built and painted poorly, there's still a substantial amount untouched on the sprues which I can put to good use some time in the future. I began work on the Rhino as a transport for my first squad

of MKIII wolves the other night and have thoroughly enjoyed the process and think it's turning out pretty nicely. I might try and fashion a pintle mounted weapon some time in the future as right now it's pretty toothless.

That's all for now. I have some more photographs I took this morning of some other minis I'll be posting later on in the week.

2017 - The Year Ahead

Now that the new year is here I am able to begin my attempt at working through my vast backlog of miniatures. I'm going to aim to complete a project each month, and hopefully by the end of 2017 I will have completed the majority of my outstanding projects. 

First up is a Heresy Era Space Wolves army. As well as a bunch of MkIV marines left over from Betrayal at Calth, I've also picked up a Burning of Prospero boxset. My aim is to have at least 5 minis a month completed and anything above that is a bonus. I got a head start over Christmas and have managed to complete 3 MkIII marines and Geigor Fell Hand. By the end of January I should have at least 5 MkIIIs complete and a handful of MkIVs.

Aside from the 30k minis I've also invested in a small group of German WW2 troops in winter clothing for a Stalingrad diorama I'm hoping to complete in the near future. On top of this I recently bought some Russian WW2 troops in winter clothing from an extremely cheap sale on Warlord's Bolt Action site. I managed to pick up some Primer for a Universal Carrier project I'm working on with my dad, as well as some US Airborne and US Marines for Western and Pacific theatre dioramas respectively. On top of all this I've got the remainder of my WW! British infantry platoon to finish.

 A very busy year ahead.

Warlord US Marines