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No Beserkers Were Harmed in the Making of this Article.... | |||||||||||
| It seems to be almost a natural law that, if you collect a 13th Company army, then you have to paint the Chaos elements of their armour as if they've mugged the entire World Eaters Legion and nicked their armour. Feeling like a challenge, and a change, when I came to paint the Grey Slayers from last month I decided to break the mould and do something completely different. Looking through my housemate's copy of Codex: Chaos Space Marines 1, I decided that there were few Chaos colour schemes I actually liked. Some of them, like the Death Guard or Thousand Sons were too extreme in their corruption, while others, like the Emperor's Children or the Pyre seemed to be designed with the intention of laminating my retina onto the back of my skull. Following the advice given in an 'Eavy Metal article on painting 13th Company, I decided on two sets of Legion colours for the Wulfen: the colours of the Night Lords and of the Sons of Malice 2. Night Lords were chosen because, according to their background, they are one of the least physically corrupted of the Chaos Legions- I'd like to think the 13th Company would be smart enough to minimise their corruption by using the least tainted material possible. The colours of the Sons of Malice were chosen for two reasons. Firstly, the blackand white inverted colour scheme looked really effective, and I felt that when combined with the mid-gray of the Wolf armour would look even better. The other reason I cose them is that their colour scheme echoes that of Malal, an old Chaos God from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Malal was meant to be the god of vengeance, and of using Chaos to destroy it self, which I felt fitted really nicely with the 13th Company background. Armed with the above colour scheme ideas, I started work on the Grey Slayers. After a black spray undercoat, and a little bit of touch up work with slightly watered down Chaos Black, I applied three thinned-down layers of Codex Grey to the non-chaotic bits of armour. While I attempted to leave the recesses in the armour black, I wasn't always successful, so I went back and touched them up with a mix of Chaos Black and Black Ink - the Chaos Black being added to improve the opacity of the shading, helping to hide any grey in the recesses. The final stage in painting the Imperial elements of the armour was a highlight around the edges of the armour plates with a Codex Grey/Fortress Grey mix - after experimenting, I found that Fortress Grey was too shapr a highlight for my liking, while the mix was more subtle. Once they had dried, I split the ten Grey Slayers into two groups of five, ensuring there was a Wolf Guard Pack Leader, a meltagun and a plasma gun in each batch. The first five I worked on were those who were getting Night Lords colouration. I applied two thinned down coats of Regal Blue to the main armour plates, with the occasional retouch to get a smooth finish. Tin Bitz was used as a basecoat for the meal trim, with Shinig Gold applied over the top. A wash of Chestnut Ink finished off the gold. At this point, the blue was looking too flat, so I applied Regal with a bit of Skull White as a highlight to the edges of the armour. The finished models looked like this:  The Grey Slyers that were getting the Sons of Malice colours needed a bit more thought. Helemets, torsos, legs and backpacks that used Chaos elements wuld have to be carefuly bisected, which would be one of the more difficult painting taskes I've done. Using the picture in the Chaos Space Marine codes as a refernce, I applied a coat of Codex Grey to the areas that would be becoming white, and followed up with a coat of Fortress Grey. Many, many thinned down coats of Skull White followed, until I got a finish I was happy with, and that appeared not to have strayed into the wrong areads. Most of the metal trim was done in Boltgun Metal, with a thin wash of Chaos Black over the top. Any skulls that were where bisecting colours met had the black and white swapped round, following the old symbol of Malal. Anywhere the skulls were what weren;t on the bisectng points, they were either painted gold (as above) or boltgun. The final stage was to give the black areas a highlight with a Codex Grey/Chaos Black mix, to pick out definition on them. The end results appearing here:  Using the models I'd painted, and some proxies, I played a couple of 40k in 40 minutes games against Shas'o Sodit's Speed Freak army, to see how the 13th COmpany performed. The first game, with what I felt was a sensible force (2 packs of Grey Slayers, one with 2 flamers, 1 with 2 plasma guns, both with Wolf Guard Pack LEaders with Power Fists) ended up with me getting massacred in hand-to-hand combat - the Night Fight rules prevented me from being able to immoboloise or stun any of his trukks, so all the Ork mobs hit me in one go. In the second game, I rewrote my list pretty much entirely. Gone was the flamer pack, and in their place were 12 Fenrisian Wolves and 5 Wulfen. I also cut down the size of the plasma gun pack, and removed most of the wargear from the Pack Leader. While I still lost the recon, the game was much closer, as described by Shas'o Sodit in his article. Lessons Learned from these games: 1, They're probably too expensive to field effectively (21 pts for a basic trooper) in this size of game. 2, Splitting your two units up is a bad move. 3, MotW WGPL are v. dangerous in close combat - just need to remember that MotW applies both ways 4, Wulfen are really quite hard in hand to hand vs Orks - they got charged, and still killed 9 orks from 20 before they got to attack - and eventually destroyed all bar 4 of the two mobs 5, Wolves need some form of support, as they're a wee bit fragile when barbequed.... 6, Wulfen are really hard against Orks in hand to hand combat..... So, onto the purchases I made this month. My first priority has to e making this army legal for larger games, so a Wolf Lord is a must, as is a second box of Grey Slayers. The final purchase this month was a Space MArine bike, to be converted into the first of a Storm Claw biker pack.
Bearing in mind I had a total of £33 to spend this month, this leaves £7 to carry over to next month. I'm aiming to buy 2 boxes of Wulfen next month, so I'll be on the lookout for a good deal on them. Until then, may you roll 6's and your enemy roll 1's. 1, Available from all good retailers, and some not-so-good ones as well.... 2, One of the other Chaos Chapters in the back of the painting section. | |||||||||||
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