What feels like ages ago I had set out to tear a part my original 3rd edition Space Wolves army and completely rebuild them by including pieces from the newest line of sprues to give them new life and attitude.
I started off by dumping every miniature in a cleaning solution called 'Simple Green' for a week because it is excellent at chewing away at the paint and leaving even the plastic miniatures underneath unharmed. Now granted for some models which had more than one coat of paint on them (ahem... I was a newbie once... lol) I had to scrub off what paint I could with a hard denture brush before putting them back in the simple green bath for another week to remove the rest.
Once done, it was a matter of carefully cutting the limbs off and in some cases power packs and heads before giving them some new equipment while giving the older pieces to some newer age bodies to give the over all army a bit of new and old school image.
My old 3rd editions rhinos to say the least had seen far better days and since I really wanted to go more armour based for this army, I started asking friends and family to buy me tanks for birthday and christmas gifts which worked out quite nicely despite taking awhile to accumulate all that I required. Either way, I went about building them one after another and go the idea to add bullet holes and gashes in the hauls to look like they were really in the heat of battle. I tried not to go too over board though as you don't want your tanks to look like they're on the verge of being a scrap pile! (Unless your an Ork player... you might then!)
Any who, paint removal, miniature restoration and war torn details complete, I sprayed the entire army a base of Chaos Black and spent a fair bit of time deciding on just exactly how I wanted them to look. I knew right from the start that I wanted to avoid the typical bright space wolves grey scheme as it just doesn't strike me as a rough and tough sort of army. I eventually dry brushed them to exactly that but then covered them in a wash of Badab Black to tone them right down to what I can only really describe as a stone grey and found that I really enjoyed that look. So I went about painting in the details while still deciding on which great company symbol to use and how I'd approach pack markings... which I have more or less figured out now but is always subject to change as I go along.
Now with the story of my long adventure to getting to this point complete, I'd like to share the first photographs of completed work with much more to come in the following weeks as I finish off each pack and vehicle. So to start off, here is my Drop Pod from a front view closed up, side view closed up and finally with all hatches open!
What do you think?
I started off by dumping every miniature in a cleaning solution called 'Simple Green' for a week because it is excellent at chewing away at the paint and leaving even the plastic miniatures underneath unharmed. Now granted for some models which had more than one coat of paint on them (ahem... I was a newbie once... lol) I had to scrub off what paint I could with a hard denture brush before putting them back in the simple green bath for another week to remove the rest.
Once done, it was a matter of carefully cutting the limbs off and in some cases power packs and heads before giving them some new equipment while giving the older pieces to some newer age bodies to give the over all army a bit of new and old school image.
My old 3rd editions rhinos to say the least had seen far better days and since I really wanted to go more armour based for this army, I started asking friends and family to buy me tanks for birthday and christmas gifts which worked out quite nicely despite taking awhile to accumulate all that I required. Either way, I went about building them one after another and go the idea to add bullet holes and gashes in the hauls to look like they were really in the heat of battle. I tried not to go too over board though as you don't want your tanks to look like they're on the verge of being a scrap pile! (Unless your an Ork player... you might then!)
Any who, paint removal, miniature restoration and war torn details complete, I sprayed the entire army a base of Chaos Black and spent a fair bit of time deciding on just exactly how I wanted them to look. I knew right from the start that I wanted to avoid the typical bright space wolves grey scheme as it just doesn't strike me as a rough and tough sort of army. I eventually dry brushed them to exactly that but then covered them in a wash of Badab Black to tone them right down to what I can only really describe as a stone grey and found that I really enjoyed that look. So I went about painting in the details while still deciding on which great company symbol to use and how I'd approach pack markings... which I have more or less figured out now but is always subject to change as I go along.
Now with the story of my long adventure to getting to this point complete, I'd like to share the first photographs of completed work with much more to come in the following weeks as I finish off each pack and vehicle. So to start off, here is my Drop Pod from a front view closed up, side view closed up and finally with all hatches open!
What do you think?
