Jessa and I have been doing a lot of TV and crafts lately – basically watching TV while doing crafting stuff. Jessa has her crochet projects (which I’ll let her tell you about), while I have been doing a lot of Warhammer 40k stuff this time around. My last post has the painting I’ve been doing, but here is a quick summary of the other projects in various stages of completion.

Bjorn the Fell-Handed

I started this project with a basic venerable dreadnought, and worked on the close combat weapon first. I picked up the last metal Ravener Karl had at the shop (they had just released plastic models), and clipped the four smaller claws for Bjorn’s characteristic wolf claws. In putting together the close combat weapon, however, I magnetized the end, so that the hand section would be interchangeable. I used the other hand in the Venerable Dreadnought box to create a second close combat weapon using the longer Ravener claws. Here are the two weapons side by side:

I then started on the banners. I had a couple of space marine banners in my bits box, so I popped off the eagles on the top, and replaced them with a bit I got in my space wolves boxes. I tried to make it look like the wolf claw was grasping the top of the banner, and was pretty happy with how it came out. The rest of the bits came from a combination of the space wolf boxes and the Forge World icons I got a while back. I’m particularly happy with how the wolf-skulls on the knee pads turned out, I was a little hesitant about that bit, so I’m hoping it stays good looking once it’s painted.

Swiftclaw Bikers

I got a bunch more bikers from Will who decided not to run them. I was happy to grab them because I like my bikers much better than my jump packs. Also, it allowed me to fill out my biker squad a little better (it was pretty slim before). The catch was that these didn’t come with bases! Wanting to find some, I walked into Karl’s and he happened to have exactly what I was looking for (I’m sure he’s psychic – he always has the little obscure things I need precisely when I need them). Once I started gluing the bikers down to the bases, I realized I could fairly easily make some of them popping a wheelie. So I glued a few of them like this – I think it fits with the style of the Swiftclaws – they’re supposed to be Bloodclaws on bikes, and those Bloodclaws are ornery.

Egil, Iron Wolf

I’ve always liked the look of the servo-harness, and was a little bummed to find out that the Space Wolves didn’t have anything like that. However, when I was reading the fluff in the Space Wolves codex, I noticed that there was a Wolf Lord who definitely fit the role of the Master of the Forge. So, I used that as an excuse to get one and put him together.

After using him last year, I still felt he needed a bit more customization to separate him from just another space marine. After picking up the Ravener for my Bjorn model, I figured I would use the tail to make a pretty convincing extra arm for the servo-harness. Overall, I’m happy with how it looks, but I need to work the Green Stuff a bit more so that it looks smoother. I also want to tag on a bit more wolf iconography, but that’s getting back-burned for now.