Plastic Kingdoms: Focus on ... New Space Wolves and Deathpack Formation

Hello again my good friends... This is a pretty good week for Space Wolves enthusiasts – Ulrik the Slayer, the Iron Priest and Wolf Lord Krom are now up, along with a splendid, excellent value Start Collecting! set, and also a tremendous The Beast Arises novel. Today I'll be going over these items in a little more detail: tune in and see just how awesome the Space Wolves can be...

Feed your thunderwolf with chaotic Astartes because why not?

Wolf Lord Krom

Remember him from Stormclaw? He's back!

A fiercely competitive warrior who lives for the thrill of proving the Space Wolves’ superiority in combat, Wolf Lord Krom is an intimidating figure. Leaping at the chance to prove himself, he gleefully takes any opportunity to challenge his peers - though all know that it is the spilling of the foe’s blood that pleases him most of all. His epithet, ‘Fierce-eye,’ is borne of his gaze - an intense, penetrating stare that accurately judges the weaknesses of enemy and ally alike.

Wielding his perfectly-balanced frost axe, Wyrmclaw, he is the perfect example of Space Wolves’ aggression.

The details are awesome!

This multi-part plastic kit contains all the components necessary to assemble Wolf Lord Krom, roaring tyrant of the Space Wolves. Armed with a frost axe and bolt pistol, he comes in a suitably heroic and aggressive pose!

The pose of this guy is so great that it has already inspired some for great conversions, check out this re-done Ragnar Blackmane:

See more at notquitepainted.blogspot

The main body comes from the Krom set, a few extras like the Double Bladed Chainsword are from the Space Wolves Upgrade Kit... but you should check the Blog for more details!

Ulrik the Slayer

The "new" old chap...

He’s quite the heroic guy, is Ulrik the Slayer. Not only does he have an excellent name – I mean, you know what he’s about already, don’t you? – but he’s been knocking around for longer than any other Space Wolf (except the Dreadnoughts, but they’re a bit bleak really and don’t count) and has punched more xenos faces than virtually anyone in the Imperium. He leads from the front, see!

More details...

Ulrik is a tremendous character to deploy on the battlefield; bestowing Preferred Enemy and Stubborn special rules onto his Space Wolf chums, he’s a support character of impressive power. Not only does he inspire the Warriors of the Fang to great things, he’ll cheerfully belabour the forces of Chaos with his crozius arcanum! Definitely one to keep around, this fellow.

But, miniature wise, I've a little of mixed feelings about it... The details are great and I bet that those plastic parts will be great for conversions, but I really don't like his pose. As a HQ who leads from the front and "punches a lot of xenos faces" he has a too much static position on the tabletop, look for example to the old model:

See the stick, see the stick? Fetch !!!

At least he seems to be inspiring his fellow wolf brothers, while the new one seems to be looking to the battle from far... but sure the new one is far more rich in details. But while I was searching for Ulrik's images I've found an interesting Blog with a good solution for this problem:

See more at occasional-artwork.blogspot

Parts, I guess, were made with the old model and the main body is from Betrayal at Calth's Dark Apostle... but check the said Blog for more information!

Iron Priest (and how to build an Iron Priest on a Thunderwolf)

Even this guy looks more into the fray than Ulrik...

Via GW

This weekend saw the new plastic Space Wolves Iron Priest go up on pre-order. Not one to waste time, Grand Overlord von Jamie grabbed me, TV’s Famous “Diamond” Dom, as I attempted to sip my morning coffee and forced a handful of plastic upon me. “Make me an Iron Priest on a Thunderwolf for the blog,” bellowed our office Northerner, and with that he was gone. Probably to furnish his pantry with gristle pies and undrinkably strong tea, I expect.

So, armed with the Thunderwolves kit and the Iron Priest I set upon a simple conversion that any Wolf Lord can have a go at. The premise is pretty simple, I used the entire top half of the Iron Priest (minus the legs) and fixed him to a suitably techy-looking Thunderwolf. There was a little bit of jiggery-pokery which I’ll go into in a bit.

I decided to select a Thunderwolf that I felt would combine well with the heavy tech look of the Iron Priest. I opted for the heavily augmented version (complete with bionic leg and eye) which was in a stalking pose. The way the head of the Thunderwolf pointed mirrored the position of the helfrost pistol on the Iron Priest too, which makes for a nice composition.

I assembled the Thunderwolf and glued the rider’s legs to the saddle, then turned my attention to the Iron Priest himself. I removed all the components from the sprue, cleaned them up and started dry-fitting the parts to get an idea of what I’d have to tinker with when I put him on his mount.

It was obvious pretty quickly that the wolf pelt on the Iron Priest’s waist would have to be removed as it wouldn’t work with a seated model. I just cut this off with my fine detail cutters and tidied up the edges with a craft knife. No remorse.

To ensure the entire torso could fit on the seated legs I also had to remove the power cabling from the helfrost pistol. I’m sure someone will ask how the gun now works but I’m not that worried. I’ll just put it down to space magic.

That was pretty much it. This conversion is basically an entire Thunderwolf and the Iron Priest from the waist up with a couple of very minor modelling tweaks, which is something I think pretty much any hobbyist can do. And it was done in roughly an hour, so not that big an undertaking.

Now this episode left me with a spare set of legs from the Iron Priest so I combined these with a torso, head, backpack and set of shoulder pads from the Thunderwolves kit and a couple of Grey Hunter arms from my bitz box to create a random model. He’ll probably become a Lone Wolf for my collection at some point. You can never have enough Space Wolves.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must away to my jade zeppelin to fling sharpened coins from a great height into a pond, with the hope of spearing some kind of fish or fish-analogue for my tea. If anyone knows of an easier way to catch fish I’d dearly love to hear it – I’m running desperately low on Omega-3 and my knees are emitting an increasingly alarming creak with every move I make.

There isn't much to add, the new kit allows for great conversions and in his own is already great!

Start Collecting! Space Wolves and new Deathpack Formation Rules

Forged from a race of ferocious warriors raised on the death world of Fenris, the Space Wolves are furious, savage adversaries -the perfect fusion of raw might and technological supremacy, fighting with blade, claw and boltgun against the horrific armies that threaten to consume mankind.

This is a great-value box set that gives you an immediate collection of fantastic Space Wolves miniatures, which you can assemble and use right away in games of Warhammer 40,000! You’ll receive three Thunderwolves, a Space Wolves Wolf Lord, a ten-man Space Wolves Pack and an exclusive Space Wolves Formation rules sheet, allowing you to collect, assemble and play with your new miniatures right away!

So, what do we get in this deal? For £50, and considering the prices of each set, the Wolf Lord is completely free... Not too shabby! And what about this box special rule?

Sorry, the English part isn't that good...

For Glory, for Russ!: Each formation unit within 12″ of the Wolf Lord may either reroll shooting rolls of “1”, or run and charge the same turn. Each eligible unit can choose a different rule.

Generally speaking I like the new Space Wolf Sculpts. I’m really glad that the Iron Priest got a new model and also happy about the return of Krom... Again mixed feelings about Ulrik. The Start Collecting box promises to be another great deal as usual but before I end this post there is something else coming:

Via BolS

GW is planning three blackout dates in the near future – which give us a very good idea what they may be planning. Come see:

via captain citadel 2-17-2016

“A mate of mine passed along that GW has blacked out the following dates for their store employees: Feb 28, Apr 16, and May 7th. I assume that means big releases on those dates.”

Historically, the last two GW blackout dates were for the Betrayal at Calth and Age of Sigmar’s launch before that. Let’s take a look:

Ok, now there’s a problem with that first date – February 28th is a Sunday. So either that is just a typo and actually refers to Saturday the 27th or something very odd is going on with GW. In any case, Saturday the 27th has been fingered as the pre-release date for Deathwatch vs Genestealer Cult game. So that one makes sense.

We then have the April 16th and May 7th

The other boxed sets mentioned by Sad Panda were the Age of Sigmar boxed game mid year and the sequel to Betrayal at Calth after summer. Note that there has been conflicting rumors saying that the Betrayal at Calth sequel was scheduled for mid-year, so multiple rumormongers are now saying it is coming – the argument is about the exact timing.

I would expect the May 7th date to be one of those two boxed sets.

Which leaves April 16th. That isn’t too far away so I would think that is a major product launch of some type that isn’t a stand-alone boxed game. The most likely suspects for GW are either a major new army release, or a new edition launched of some key game.