13th Company Space Wolves







My Logan Grimnar


And my favourite of them all:


Introduction
To prove that I can and do bandwagon hop onto every Imperial army that GW puts out, I've decided to start a Space Wolf army! This has been quite the trend I've noticed in my current hobby ventures. Although I wasn't doing it to powergame (I play with friends typically and aim to win only slightly more than I lose and adjust my lists to suit that goal).

Financing
This new project was financed by selling off the parts of my Blood Angels that I no longer use (including terminators, drop pods and tactical marines). When I play my blood angels I run a razorback and predator parking lot and had no room for the units listed above.

The Goal
I planned to do a small 'Showcase' army to display some sweet conversions and a theme which is unlike any army I've previously done since while I've always strived to convert heavily and bring something unique to the table, I haven't followed much of a theme. Our local GW store where I play once and a while has a point limit of 1250 so this seemed the perfect size to aim for.

The List:
Logan Grimnar
Rune Priest in terminator armour

4 man Wolf Guard in terminator armour with drop pod
5 man Wolf Guard in terminator armour with drop pod
5 man Wolf Guard in terminator armour with drop pod

6 man longfang pack with 5 missile launchers

Total: 1247

I will put each HQ unit in a drop pod with 4 terminator body guards (one of the five man squads has a cyclone missile launcher that will detach to join the longfangs). I've decided to equip them to abuse them but I won't bother to list that out here.

I'm looking forward to 7 missile launcher shots raining overhead and covering the terminators. Things will either go extremely well or extremely poorly but it will be fun.

Modelling:

Terminator helmets converted with the following:


And the shoulder pads are from MaxMini.eu.

The runepriest was made using a SciborMiniatures model. They have a scale slightly larger than the standard terminator so they look quite fitting.

Painting:
Since they will be a 13th company-esque army they will be painted in the more dull-grey scheme of years past to fit their more ancient armour as so:

Awesome! I guess to weren't kidding when you said the only thing stopping you from making more armies was your wallet! The Space Wolves are very cool and I think a 13th Company would be quite interesting to see. The 3rd party bitz you are using look fantastic and would fit the Wolf theme perfectly.

I am not offering list advice, simply what might look cool model wise, but why not bump the Rune Priest to Njal? He has that cool robot bird that you could magnetize, thus enabling him to be used as a regular RP or the special character.

Looking forward to some progress!

Yeah Wolf I have a problem with buying too much. Although now I'm hoping that I can maybe put a stop on over expanding. This project is really just an upgrade to existing models I already own. Selling off the underused portions of my marines and repainting/converting new models just means that my themed army will look better and have rules to match. Someday I will probably even make a bike army but I will do that up in another armies colours. I don't see the need anymore to have all of my marines in a uniform scheme.

That idea for Njal is great and was the original plan even though he would be run as a plain rune priest. I will just have to come up with something to count as a bionic bird...

Theambit, you might be interested in a new spray paint can from Battlefront. Check out the fifth image in this link which shows an early to mid-war German grey. The colour in the can is Vallejo Black Grey, which is indeed a pretty dark grey! but it might be a better undercoat colour for you to do your 13th Co guys with.

I'm planning on getting a couple of cans to do my second Tau army with, so unfortunately as yet I have no personal experience of the standard of the spray itself. However, it is apparently Vallejo paint in it as far as I can work out which can only be a good thing!

Vallejo's range of greys is pretty extensive, and with the bottles holding 17ml(?) of paint as opposed to GW's pots of 12ml they last a bit longer.

Bionic Bird: dead simple. Here's what I did for my Rune Priest's robotic canary: Take one paper clip, bend it around a bit until you form a pair of wings and a tail. Then add green stuff to form the said wings and tail, adding a roll of GS to create the body and the head. Let it dry for 24-36hrs, then cover it with superglue and paint it. Job done.

E.

When I was first starting, the Eye of Terror campaign was just going on, and I was this || close to starting a Space Wolf army, specifically 13th Company, due to one modelling suggestion in the campaign book (which sadly is OOP).

They suggested modelling the 13th Company as a mixture of loyalist and Chaos Marine bits, with any chaos iconography scrapped off, with a mostly Space Wolf paint scheme with black and red bits from some of the chaos parts. Since the 13th Company was existing behind enemy lines in the Eye of Terror for millenia, they logically repaired damaged armor bits with pieces looted from the bodies of fallen traitors.

I think this makes for fantastic modelling potential, and ironically when I've batted around the idea of doing an Alpha Legion force with my Imperial Guard bits (I like Commissars too much though, so I'll probably never do anything from sitting on the fence too long) only reversed.

Anyway, the suggestion is to use various chaos bits like backpacks, legs, shoulders, etc as well as loyalist bits, to show this battlefield scavage and repair aspect. There's better pictures in the Eye of Terror campaign Codex if you can get a hold of a copy!

Eiglepulper: The paint sounds quite helpful but I've not had any issues with krylon black primer followed by a GW foundation paint. It coats amazingly well. You should PM me an image of your raven though I'm eager to see it.

M'yen Shi: I actually found that book and looked through it. Problem is my Long Fangs are reincarnated Devestators from the AoBR set so they can't have too much change. I do have a couple chaos backpacks, a gun and a helmet mashed into the squad though. It is a really good idea.

Having gotten most of the paint off of my missile launchers here is my test scheme:



You can see where the model was scraped a bit in the paint removal process and he was a bit 'shot up' in his previous incarnation.

I'm not really happy with the gold but I don't know what else to do with it. Maybe it will grow on me. The photo doesn't help its case either although you can see the eye flair I tried to paint on. Thoughts are welcome before it's all too late!

Did you wash the gold in Gryphonne Sepia? I do that for all my gold and it makes them look a lot smoother.

Other than that I think he's looking good! Although the 13th Company colors bear a striking resemblance to my ARC-16's!

Well I can't help that you preemptively took my colour scheme! Just kidding, it's just a nice colour I wanted to try out and I wasn't a big fan of the baby blue vikings.

I put the models in a bit of nail polish remover after the simple green to get the last bits off I could (only 10 seconds or so but between that maybe eating some plastic, my scraping old paint off, and the incomplete simple green there are some rough areas on the plastic surface (see the belt buckle and knee pads) which made dry brushing difficult on the armour and the gold difficult on the trim. Being zoomed in that far on the photo also doesn't hide anything although that isn't an excuse - I want them to look as good as they can.

The gold is tin bits with GW gold (whatever the name is) brushed on for highlight with devlan mud wash. Not sure the different effect your way would give me but I'm open to suggestions since the terminators will likely have a lot of gold trim and I would like it to look nice.

Theambit, I recommend you stop my the automotive department in your local Wal-mart and get a jug of Purple Power; you get more of it for less money than Simple Green, and it works a hell of a lot better. Be warned though, do not-repeat, DO NOT EXPOSE YOUR HANDS TO IT FOR ANYTHING MORE THAN A FEW SECONDS AT A TIME! It will suck ALL the oils/moisture out of your skin, leaving it sort of leathery, and all the oils will collect on the surface and form a gross film that you have to scrape off with your nails. VERY unpleasant! But that warning aside, it eats throguh paint like nothing else; heck, it virtually dissolves the primer I tend to use, and metal, plastic, or resin, most of the paint tends to just slide right off. Give it a go and see if that helps you any!

As for your gold situation...

I picked up a great Gold recipe, don't remmeber the site though. Start by coating the areas to be gold in Chaos Black, followed by Brazen Brass/Dwarf Bronze (whatever it's called now), followed by Golden Yellow (doesn't have to be a perfect coat, but try and get as good coverage as possible) and then a coat or two of Burnished Gold. That will REALLY make it stand out, and you can follow with a bit of Devlan Mud to take off the extreme sheen of it and dirty it up a little.

I tried out a bunch of different shoulder combinations and settled on this one. It is a brighter gold than previously done on the test model which was tin bitz under shining gold. This method is chainmail under shining gold with devlan wash. I had to push the hazard stripes; I like hazard stripes for some reason and the more the marrier!



I really like the kneeling guy's helmet which was grabbed from some random chaos sprue at a friends house. One of them has a chaos back pack and the bolter is old school too.

Now they're just waiting for their Wolf Guard cyclone missile launcher to guide them. And some basing.

I was debating sponging some battle damage on them. Any thoughts on this?

Looking good! I think the color scheme works nicely, although I think they would pop more with a bit of dark black lining. But that may just be me.

As for battle damage, isn't the whole gimmick of the 13th Company that they are war torn vets living off the land, so to speak? It would seem like battle damage would be pretty prevalent.

The drummer in my band is slowly building up a Space Wolf force, to give them a bit of a more baroque look (or a slightly more Vikingish Bronze Age feel) he used Dwarf Bronze on the 'gold' parts which were then washed to give some shade and left unhighlighted to let the metallic paint do it's thing.

I suspect that this guide may have inspired him a bit and it's certainly something that I'll be using on my Dark Angels to give them that old medieval look.

I tried a couple of different types of gold recipes shown online and most of them looked too bronzy/rusty for my tastes or required 3-4 paints I didn't own. As for the black lining I will try to put some more into the recesses although part of the issue is that they've been primed twice and the paint remover didn't get all of the cracks clean thus giving less area to contrast. This is really apparent on the centre model's shoulder. I'll try again! Thanks guys.

I will also try out some weathering I just don't want to over do it - I've gotten the look to work on my new tanks but not so much the IG troops.

Fair enough! Keep up the good work duder and keep us posted

Have you given any consideration to anything I've said?

Orpheus Hangar since I did not intend or have the need to paint strip the models a second time your first bit of advice while informative did not provide me with anything to test it on.

As for your second piece of advice, I addressed that in the next two posts where I said I wasn't planning to buy any new paint pots and had to make due with what I had.

I appreciate your comments and did not intend to upset you by not addressing them specifically.

Alright...well, if ya do get any mor epaints sometime it's a combination I highly recommend. if you don't have Burnished Gold, though, then good luck trying to get the shade of gold you're trying to achieve! White or Golden Yellow basecoat with Burnished Gold would probably be the best.

My long fangs I believe are finished (minus grass on the base).

I put an additional wash on the models to make some of the areas pop more; sadly this was a bit thick on the long fang sergeant's shoulder but it is better than it was.

I also re-did the lenses which looks much better and a lot of touch up detail painting. I sponged some liberal damage onto the models and tried that out as well as dusting their legs which I will leave up to you to critique.


Oh and I tried to paint a boot tread! A little too dark now but next time I might try green stuff to make treads on the terminators feet if they need it instead of just paint.


I can't wait for my terminators to show up and start modelling them as they will be the real face of the army.

I appreciate the comments thus far which I think really helped the models pop (the further darking of the recesses), the gold painting suggestions and Wolf's thrust to dirty the models. I was definitely the most afraid of wrecking them with that stage.

Now do you feel I should use a light brown grass on par with my Imperial Guard (link below) or the standard green GW flock?

As always, looking good Theambit

IMHO, I would use the standard green flock....... I find the the bleached static grass makes it look really...... Cold. Unless that's the look your going for .

I'm looking forward to seeing your terminators .

- Null

Very nicely done TheAmbit,

I like the GW flock myself, but your models always turn out awesome so I'm sure you won't have a problem either way.

Post picks of the Terminators ASAP.