Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of hobby and gaming progress through 2025. Last time around I was working on a Space Wolves and getting in a practice game against Chaos Knights. This week it’s mostly just hobby progress as I work my way through the last of these Space Wolves and then get ready for the Goonhammer Open this weekend. I’ll talk about both here, before some notes on what’s next.
Hobby Progress
It’s all Space Wolves, all the time. About three weeks ago I resolved to paint up all of these models, both for my buddy SD47, and for the New Minis Review Article we published last Saturday. And as of last night, I am DONE! I’m very happy with how these turned out, and getting all of these models – all 35 of them, including five characters with Grimnar – was a real challenge in the time I had. I enlisted a little help from my buddy Max, who threw in a few hours’ worth of assists helping do some panel lining and basecoats, and got an extra assist from Ilor (more on that in a moment).
There’s a ton here, and there are things I didn’t show off last time – either because of embargo or because they weren’t done yet. So let’s go through them.
The Blood Claws were the first unit I finished and they painted up pretty fast. This is where I more or less came up with the scheme I’d be using for the entire army. This is where I started messing up the heraldry right away; I looked at the Space Wolves heraldry diagram and then promptly mixed up my rows, so I did black and red for the Blood Claws, which seemed right, instead of red and yellow. This would carry over to the Grey Hunters as well.
Speaking of which, these guys I finished yesterday morning. They have white and black shoulder pads, which I’m told is for Long Fangs, but I’m not going to change it now. SD47 can do that with contrast paint on his own time. What matters is that the shoulder pads are obviously distinct from the Blood Claws, allowing you to quickly identify this unit as separate from the other, despite the similar armor colors.
Next up are the Terminators. I already showed these guys off in the Space Wolves model review but I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. They were deceptively complicated to assemble, but not bad to paint.
Grimnar was way larger than I expected him to be, and the only model I painted in subassemblies – I kept the wolves and base separate, which made it easier to get under Grimnar’s model and also do details on the base. Most of these cape/pelt guys are constructed in a way that makes it impossible to do subassemblies, but this one made sense for Grimnar. The axe was just done with contrasts – I started with Wraithbone, then did a coat of Imperial Fists contrast, shaded that with Iyanden and Blood Angels Red contrast paint, and finally some Carroburg Crimson. Then I did some edge highlights with Dorn Yellow.
Arjac was another fun one and went together surprisingly fast, in part because he isn’t covered in wolf pelts. I put him in his “Hey shitass” pose, because I’m not a coward.
Njal wasn’t done last weekend – I finished him up on Sunday – and I foolishly opted to go wtih the “glowing runes” approach. I think it looks great – especially on the tabletop at a distance (it’s not my finest OSL work), and it’s a nice piece of visual pop to the army/model. The way I did the runes was I painted them white, then I edge highlighted them with Baharroth Blue, then I shaded around that with Aethermantic Blue.
The new Wolf Priest is the coolest model in the new range and probably the fastest one ot paint, despite having a full cloak. This was the only model I primed black in the set and I’m happy with how he turned out.
The Headtakers were a bit more of a challenge, since they’re just covered in all kinds of details which bog down the batch painting process. I think on these I went armor > pelts > details, just to keep the amount of correcting work after drybrushing the pelts to a minimum. This is where my Artis Opus drybrushes came in handy, as having small, high quality drybrushes made doing the pelts a breeze.
Finally there’s the Wolf Guard Battle leader. He should probably have a hammer but I went sword because it looks cooler. Someone asked me how I do blonde hair and it’s pretty simple – I paint the hair with Wraithbone, then I cover it in Iyanden Yellow Contrast, do a tiny bit of shading with Fuegan Orange shade if I want to darken it, and then I do thin highlights with Dorn Yellow.
That’s it but if you missed my quick tutorials in the past two articles, you can find them below:
Rob's Quick Space Wolves Recipe - click to expand
And here’s the recipe for fur and pelts:
Rob's Quick Fur and Pelts Recipe - click to expand
With those Space Wolves finally done – and I’m glad it’s over – the next thing on my list is those two bloat-drones, which need to be finished for Tacoma. After that it’s Emperor’s Children for the rest of the summer, and I’ll do a full inventory on those in a week or two.
Prep for the Goonhammer Open
The other major thing on my radar this past week has been the 2025 Goonhammer Open. I’m running the Narrative event alongside Norman, my ongoing podcast co-host (we do a weekly podcast that’s exclusive to Goonhammer Patrons), and as with every year, we’re always trying to go bigger and better with the event – more crazy set pieces, more interesting interactions, more fun ways to mix things up from standard missions.
This year’s event we’re trying a teams format, with six teams of five players organized across three alliances vying for control of the planet Varona. That gives the teams some flexibility to determine how they’ll attack zones and allocate their armies, and that helps us mitigate problems where one player doesn’t have the right unit types for something like the space table.
I don’t want to give too much away, but here are some previews of things we’ve been setting up for the event:
Next Time: Tacoma Prep Begins
I’m super excited to see how players like the event this year – the Narrative is always a blast. Once I get back it’ll be on to Tacoma, and that will also mean ramping up and getting some practice games in again – not playing this past week means I’m falling short of my games goal for the year, so I need to get back on top of that.
See you next Thursday.
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