Crusade!

I should probably have mentioned what theme I’m going for with the Blackmanes, and really it’s all about the original shortstory that was presented in White Dwarf, written by Bill King, that depicted Ragnar Blackmane leading a massed drop-pod assault of his Great Company on a Tyranid swarm, so the intent was for this force to deploy entirely via drop-pod and the only vehicles being Dreadnoughts in the FW pods. Now the changes to Deep Strike in the year since 8th released have somewhat put a kibosh on  that idea, but something still appeals about a footslogging force of Wolves (I mean it helps that you can get Blood Claws in packs up to 15….) with some units in pods coming down later.

Right, so this is the Blackmanes as I initially had them, after priming but before painting. A bit of rejigging has led to it consisting of 3 packs of Grey Hunters, 2 packs of Blood Claws, 1 pack of Long Fangs, 10 Wolf Guard Terminators, 10 Wolf Scouts, 7  Wolf Guard in power armour, Ragnar, Njiall Stormcaller, and the other company command.

A note on  the packs – some of these are purely built from the Space Wolf pack kit, but more are amalgamations of parts from several other Marine kits with a dash of Wolfy-ness for flavour. Some of these go back to the original 3rd Edition kits, then there are elements of the Chaos Space Marine and Khorne Berserker kits in there as that more rough & ready, archaic look works well for the Wolves, especially if your trying to do a squad with a bit of history behind it. And there is no greenstuff on any of these, at most there are some weapon swaps and on some of the more obviously Chaos-y pieces of detailing have either been filed down or covered over (plates from the Mordheim Middenheimer sprue were really good for that). Moral of this story? No bits ever go unused, and it’s surprising what you can find browsing parts sites and Ebay for spare lots…..