The beginning ...

I have been thinking a while about starting a CSM army (I already have a Xenos and Imperial army) but it all came down to painting more rhinos and after a full mechanized blood angels army, I can't see a rhino chassis anymore.

Recently my eye fell on an image in the CSM codex : Skyrar's Dark Wolves. Although it might be seen as jumping on the bandwagon, I took a look at the Space Wolf codex. The basic units are similar to CSM units but the Space Wolf codex has some interesting units that don't appear in the CSM codex: drop pods and thunderwolf cavalry. The latter I immediately envisioned as space marines riding juggernauts and with the new plastic kit that came out, it would even be affordable. (I googled this and discovered I wasn't the only one who was thinking about this!)

I put together a list but then came the hard part: deciding what models to use and how to paint them. The idea is that although they should look chaosy, my opponents should immediately see that they will be up against space wolves and not against CSM.

My first idea was to use the space wolves models (looks like a great kit!) and give them a chaosy look by adding at least one CSM shoulder pad and giving them CSM backpacks. I have some AoBR space marines lying around and was painting one up when I had a look at the Space Wolf Terminator painting tutorial on Beast of War. I really liked the look he was trying to get and will propably try to get that color for the blue on the picture.

But as I was painting it, it seemed a bit bland - too dark with only small parts of blue - so I took a look at the CSM models. The legs and gloves all have these nice ridges and iconography. If I adjust the paint scheme a bit so that these parts are also blue, I would get a more space wolfy feeling.

But I still need to make them look like spacewolves! So I thought (although I have shyed away from it in the past) to give them all bare heads (no helmets) as the space pups are known for that. I was thinking to paint the hair in the bright orange (for contrast) like it is shown on the box. I will try to get my hands on some of the space wolf bits (tail talismans and weapons with wolf iconography) and add those as well. I might even buy the space wolf battleforce as it also includes a drop pod and scouts.

originaly posted on my WIP thread on bolterandchainsword.com on may 5th 2011

Then along came the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge and I entered with my Chaos Space WolveS on the 4th of june. You can check out my progress up until now on my thread on their forums.

To get even more motivated to paint this army I organised a Paint & Battle campaign (tale of x gamers) in my FLGS and entered with my Skyrar's Dark Wolves. The campaign started friday september the 31st so I can now get these models some action on the battlefield.