Space Wolf Jump Pack Trio

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Ann

The new guy is the one in the middle.

After completing my goal of 1000 points of Space Wolves before the end of 2014, I’ve drastically slowed down but not stopped adding to the army. My goal now is to eventually get to 1500 points without having to use my husband’s Ultramarines as stand-in’s.

The latest addition is an assault marine pictured above between two of his friends, who I completed awhile ago now. I got a good deal on a couple of boxes of figures because I bought them right before the new ones came out as part of updating the Space Marine codex. My latest assault marine has seen a few battles now as a Wolf Guard Battle Leader, though once I get the rest of the box done he will probably find himself among the Skyclaws.

As usual I painted his power armor with Mechanicus Standard Grey, followed by a heavy wash of Badab Black, then a dry brush of Administratum Grey. When I first started my Space Wolves I tried highlighting their armor, but didn’t like how clean and polished they ended up looking. I wanted a sort of no frills, “rougher” look without doing a bunch of environmental effects like sand or mud. I found that simply dry brushing the armor gave me the effect I was looking for.

So once I finish up the Skyclaws, I’ll have to decide which of the four projects I want to work on next. I have a vindicator that has been sitting around half finished for a very long time now. Alternately, a Stormwolf might be a worthy addition to my forces, adding some needed air support and especially anti-air. Third, I’d eventually like a Void Claw formation because I usually field a lot of terminators who arrive by deep strike. I’ve been using the aegis line with a comm relay and want another option for keeping my reserve rolls reliable. Especially one my opponent can’t potentially use as well. So I’ll need to paint and magnetize a bunch of lightning claw arms to go on my existing terminators.

Lastly, my liaison officer has been calling on our friends the Ultramarines for devastator help for long enough now. It is high it is time to load honors and accolades upon my husband’s loyal, blue friends and send them in glory back to Ultramar and paint some long fangs to take the place of these puissant worthies.

Saga of Zeath the Unforgotten

Posted on August 7, 2015 by Ann

From Phil Kelly’s 2009 Space Wolves codex: “Sagas are intended to encourage players to develop some seriously cool names and stories for their Space Wolves characters. You’ll find that after a few games your heroes become a lot more interesting as they accrue personal histories of victory and (dare we say it?) defeat.”

Zeath’s Current and Past Exploits

March 2017: Zeath was reduced to a fine ash by an Eldar fire dragon unit during a raid on one of their maiden worlds. He spent almost two years in excruciating pain coalescing a new body. His unasked for and unwelcome boon is he will not stay dead until certain unknown conditions are fulfilled. There are vague reports of his exploits during this period but it is thought such tales are those of pretenders to his glory and name.

Khorne demanded a bounty of skulls and souls of Zeath in return for his life. So the rune priest duly set himself to sacrificing entire communities in order to summon khornate armies on a number of systems in the Santa Cruz sector. The daemons in turn rampage in Zeath’s name, fulfilling the space marine’s debt to the blood god.

Spring 2015: Zeath fears not the sun wolf!

Spring 2015: Zeath distinguished himself during a series of highly successful raids into the Farsight Enclaves after the legion’s attempts at diplomacy failed. (“What nice planets you people have, it sure would be a shame if anything happened to them.”) As a result he was promoted to a full Mystic, which is what Legion VI-13 calls its rune priests.

As a further honor and mark of my approbation as a Lady of Lupines and Chaos, I gifted Zeath with the status of being a painted model!

Circa 2013-14: Survived implantation of Canis Helix Type N, which also saw an increase in his psychic powers and capacity for physical regeneration. The process also has driven him somewhat mad where he is haunted by daemons both in his dreams and literally on the battlefield, which usually coincides when he is in the middle of hard fighting.

He did well in various skirmishes, raids, and battles and was eventually promoted to a sky claw sergeant. Not only did Zeath have a talent for jump infantry tactics, the young sky claws respected his daring and feared his anger so they more often than not would obey his orders. Happily, his orders were usually some variation on, “Kill them! Kill them all!”

Circa 2012: Zeath was a psyker on a Black Ship crippled and raided by ships from what is known in imperial records as Traitor Legion VI-13. When asked his name by his space marine captors/saviors, he said, “Zeath the Unforgotten,” but would never say to what the sobriquet referred. Not being ones to unnecessarily press into matters concerning a man’s private affairs, the space marines nodded and moved on with their invasive medical examinations.

Some Personal Notes

Zeath is a level 1 psyker, level 2 if the “runes are right.” He will often have powers from either the Tempestas or Daemonology-Malefic disciplines, occasionally both.
Note that he doesn’t actively summon daemons. They just sort of appear when he rages in battle. Blood with pour from his eyes, spikes will break out all over his flesh, which he ends up ripping out himself after the battle using a pair of pliers (too embarrassing to bother the medics about), and so on.
Preferred war gear is power armor, runic axe, plasma pistol and jump pack. There is no way the ironsmiths will entrust him with anything better. With all of the teeth, charms, talismans and amulets he wears at all times, if he received a particularly favorable cast of the battle bones from the Invisible Seers then he’ll have “counts as” artificer armor nonetheless due to the power of his faith in forces he neither understands nor even has a name for.
He loves the risk of discharging his plasma pistol and will do so even when it would be just as easy to throw a grenade. He’s been known to purposefully overload the weapon and throw it as an ersatz melta bomb. (Thus occasionally I’ll pay the points and include melta bombs and give his crazy tactic a chance of working.)
On a personal note Zeath has three wives but no children. He had a pet fenrisian wolf but it turned into a blood thirster due to circumstances best not mentioned and he barely managed to kill it with his force axe while it was messily manifesting. The daemon ate his left hand but it grew back better than new with little suction cups on the fingertips. Such are the gifts of the Fates!

Rune Priest

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Ann

I’ve been working on HQ’s for my Space Wolves lately, and the latest addition to my collection is this rune priest. I’ve actually had him sitting around for a couple of years, but finally decided to paint him. My original idea, after all, was to base my marines primarily around models I already owned. Especially ones that have been sitting neglected for a long time.

I took the jump pack from a Space Marine battle force. I did magnetize it because sometimes he’ll probably want to accompany a drop pod landing or maybe even ride to battle in a rhino, rather than getting stuck with the usual fate of rune priests — casting buffs on thunderwolf cavalry.

I lost the original, normal power armor backpack that came with the model so it was the Space Marine battle force to the rescue again. That piece is still in my painting queue though, since I’ve been having fun running him exclusively with the jump pack.

I like the plasma pistol. It adds a bit of color to a model that is mostly darker, earth tones. I do have to say as a weapon it is situational at best and hilariously bad at worst. I should have used a tiny magnet since it attaches at the wrist. I’ll probably do that when he has an accident and his hand falls off, or gets gnawed off again by some particularly vicious fire warrior.

Thinking about plasma pistols and having fun with how often they blow up during games has gotten me thinking about Space Wolf sagas. There is a designer’s note in the previous codex which states:

Sagas are intended to encourage players to develop some seriously cool names and stories for their Space Wolves characters. You’ll find that after a few games your heroes become a lot more interesting as they accrue personal histories of victory and (dare we say it?) defeat. In effect, your characters will be adding to their own sagas with every new game, which can be great fun.

I’ve been playing this guy for a few games now and we’ve had some laughs over his various and often unsound (game mechanics-wise) antics. So I’ve been thinking of starting a section on my blog for the “sagas” of some of my characters, and I think I’ll start with this guy, his addiction to the dangers and thrills of gratuitously discharging his plasma pistol as well as his hatred of being put on “thunderwolf detail.”