So...the Incandescent Coyotes?

I love this image, I really wish I knew who the artist was!

Yeah, yeah, I know...this marine chapter has had almost as many names as it does marines by this point, lol. This is all Zzzzzz's fault, he's the one who called them that in the comments of their last post. Naturally the name appealed to me and yet another name change was in order.

Desert Wolves 2.0...No.

Hounds of Demos...No.

Incandescent Coyotes...Yes!

Various definitions of incandescent are white/red hot, burning with passion, fiery, etc., between their orange paint and love of meltaguns this seems appropriate. Incidentally, Incandescent also appears to be a word that I can't spell consistently without the frequent assistance of spellcheck. 

Oh, and whilst on the subject of fiery, I was making six pepper pasta the other day (fantastic stuff, highly recommended!) and one of the ingredients is Adobo sauce. Hmm, I've never had that before, wonder what it tastes like? I  thought. Thus I dipped my finger in it, put said finger into my mouth for a taste and WOW! Yeah...THAT was an eye opening experience! Fiery indeed...

But anyways...back to the marines themselves, that's really why you're here right? Right.

The rest of the first combat squad.

These three are the latest WIP marines for my Incandescent Coyotes. I got a little ahead of myself, applying decals before inking the non-contrast painted portions but no matter, I can do that next. Out of order but nothing that will make the end result look any different. 

Wow, just look at that pristinely white helmet stipe will ya? That won't do, won't do at all-to the inks and washes with you!!

I showed these pics to my Beloved Wolfy who derisively commented 'They look red, and too much like marines.' To which I replied 'but...but that's cause they are marines honey.' With a disgusted snort she said 'whatever' and handed back my phone. A loyalist to the Imperium she is not!  

Note the difference is size between the (apparently) more finely-crafted combi-melta vs. the more utilitarian meltagun, both of which came from the same kit. 

Next on the agenda for these guys is the sepia wash to the non-orange areas, the base coat the base, another shot of clear coat and then its onto the sand washing/learning process again...

The Children of Torment

o/

In and amongst the experimentations on my Hounds of Demos, principally whilst waiting for the various layers of wash and/ or the contrast paint itself to dry, I was adding in some base coats and blocking out the colors on a squad of *my* new Chaos Space Marine force: The Children of Torment.

They quietly amassed in number yet were pushed aside while I finished up my Silver Drakes. They along with my preexisting squad of cultists clock in at approximately 500 points. That's probably the limit of my attention span for a new army and in all likelihood well beyond my want to actually paint all of it! However this small force isn't actually for me, but rather My Beloved Wolfy.

My 1st WIP squad of Chaos marines. Unfortunately...the aspiring champion (turned-exalted champion) in back has taken a feline induced tumble off of my desk and the chain axe broke. Looks like there was a casting flaw so that break was inevitable. However I didn't have any chaos CCWs, so he has been rearmed with a captured loyalist chainsword. Bleh

Now it is true that her Fem Fa'Tau have been hidden away in storage for what seems like years now, and she has shown no want to play 40k (or anything else here recently) either. However when I tired of my old Chaos Space Marine army and sold it off (seriously, their color scheme was a nightmare), she was quite upset that I had sold her army without even asking her permission to do so! 

But-wait, WHAT?!? 

The first army she ever used in learning to play 40k were my chaos marines. Well, when things became serious in our relationship, the old adage of 'what's hers is hers and what's mine is hers' was instituted without my knowledge...apparently. So the Fem Fa'Tau aside, she's (quote) always had a soft spot for chaos which was my first army (end quote).

'What was that? Another request for Delightful Agonies?'

In general, I've never been a fan of the noise marine minis or rules, that said I LOVE this guy! As such, he's slated to serve as this army's sorcerer. His powers will instead be sonically projected (with amps!) rather than via the usually chanted incantations of his more traditional peers...

We had talked of buying the Shadowspear boxed set and splitting it, but at the time of its release funds were not available and real life had us busy with 'it' instead. Still, I kept her love of Chaos in the back of my mind and a little ways back started amassing this little army for her use. Hey! I can use it too!

(uh...right? My love? Baby...?) 

This pic is straight out of the eBay auction.

My first purchase was actually a $34 Helbrute purchased on eBay pre-painted and only in need of basing. A few minor assembly issues aside (only really noticeable if you're looking for em), it was painted on par with, if not surpassing my own painting skills. So well done to whomever actually painted this beast!

I miss my buddy Neverness so much I felt compelled to put Space puppies debris on the Helbrute's base...

This crumpled plow is my first use of the rust weathering wash. However given all of the red that had been dry brushed on their beforehand I don't think it really added anything to it. 

I did swap out the multi-melta (a mediocre weapon) for a missile launcher (also a mediocre weapon, albeit one with twice the range). For it's secondary weapon I have it equipped with a heavy flamer which fires (literally, lol) out of the maw in the palm of it's fist. 

To date, aside from complimenting my painting of that lone chaos marine and the basing of the Helbrute, she has yet to show any real interest in  this army. That said, she's well aware that they are 'hers' and thus they'll all likely get painted (someday) as selling 'em is certainly out of the question!

Gettin Dirty Part 2 (The Hounds of Demos)

o/

I can't honestly say I have the new weathering washes, contrast paint, or even Agrellan Earth all figured out. However I've managed to get two Hounds of Demos marines to look both fairly similar and for the most part in the way I had originally envisioned (albeit via different routes). Now the trick is to maintain a consistent look without taking for bloody ever as these first two did...

Picking up from my last post, this is where i had left off from, with one marine washed and the other not.

I gave the marine on the left a very light dry brushing of bleached bone (or rather Vallejo's equivalent) prior to adding the wash. That apparently gave the surface enough grip for the wash to coat pretty evenly and as such I'll be using this method from here on out. 

The marine on the right was the previously washed, blended and sealed marine as seen in my prior post. So I just slathered on another coat and hoped for the best which as it turns out more or less ended up matching the other one.

After brushing/blending the excess dried wash off, I hit em with a quick layer of varnish before painted the bases. I then applied Agrellan Earth. I guess maybe I ought to have sealed the bases as well? Despite the solid coating, the Agrellan peeled up the base coat with itself revealing the white primer and excess orange contrast beneath. 

Then of course there's the issue of the Agrellan not even closely resembling the shade of the sand wash. So I gave the bases a quick, light inking which filled in the cracks covering the orange and white nicely. I then applied a light dry brush of bleached bone, but the tone still wasn't right, so I then added another layer of German yellow ochre and that matched the sand wash well enough to call the models 'done' pending a final coat of varnish. 

The Hounds' chapter icon. I had originally wanted to put the company number above it, but the decal application over that much of the pauldron's curve caused me to change my mind...

Like a vehicle heading down a dusty trail, the most grime collects on the rear. I guess there was some heavy/extended sprinting drills or something.

The finished doubly washed  battle brother.

A note on the other chapter markings: The white tactical arrow has been retained following the black arrow debacle. The right knee shows the company color, with the squad number below it on the greave armor. 

Oh, and I've since fixed that little white dot of missing paint on the right side marine's base.

Here are my first two Hounds of Demos. First squad, 5th battle company of the Hounds of Demos as photographed on the northern steppes of Backyardistan, Appalachian Subsector. 

I haven't formalized and fluff or backstory to go with this budding force yet, though I do have a few ideas percolating in the back of my mind...  

Gettin' dirty...

o/

As you all know, I don't like paint 'clean' minis but rather 'dirty' ones, hell even my Eldar are kinda dirty (and not just in their ways of war...). Normally this is achieved with dry brushing on the grime after the slathering of ink has dried. However dry brushing adds crud to the raised surfaces, whereas most grime (in real life) collects in the recesses and to be honest this has always bothered me a bit. 

The ultimate weathering washes are used by painting extraordinaire (in my opinion) Dwartist. Always a fan of the realism of his weathering I looked up some tutorials, liked what I saw, and how easy they were to use and bought some to give them a go myself. 

Bad print lines ought to be perfect for this project!

I painted up my Tilly to use for a test model as in hindsight, the print lines really made it look pretty rough (the truck on the other hand is much smoother), not to mention the notion of my pot-bellied Quar squeezing into the cab is kinda laughable. 

Chaos ensues...

Anyways, I varnished the Tilly and a few other minis in gloss coat as recommended in the tutorial linked above and once dry started slathering the wash on only to be met with almost immediate disaster!

Yeah this doesn't look anything like what I saw in the tutorial.
Fucking gloss coat, there's a waste of $8...

DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT USE GLOSS VARNISH as the wash will just bead up and run off like rain on a newly waxed car! I finally got it coated (sorta) as well as my shorts, desk, keyboard and anything else nearby due to to the run off. Seriously WTF?!? 

I then re-clearcoated the other minis in matte varnish and applied it to one of my Hounds of Demos marines. Whilst it went on much better, the painted on full coverage of the tutorial still alludes me. 

I also tried applying it to an unvarnished marine which just resulted in that poor sap being consigned to the simple green. Removing the excess after the wash is dry seems (to me) best done with an old, fairly stiff paint brush. Needless to say, in the case of that unvarnished marine, I just took it's paint off as well. 

Not great, but not too bad either...it does look
like it's been down a dusty road or two.

I kinda like it, but there's obviously more of a learning curve than the youtube video implies. Score another point for marketing...

So, after a bit of nerd rage and a WTF?!? facebook IM to the company (who read it but chose not to respond) I calmed down and determined that my initial test models didn't look half bad after working them over with a brush to remove the excess/blend in the dust. By the way, I suggest wearing a mask for this latter part. Luckily, everybody has those lying around at the moment, right?

A good side-by-side comparison of an unwashed and washed marine. Any speed gained from using the contrast paint will I think be negated by adding this extra step into the weathering process.

On a different note, I tried to apply black tactical arrows that I have had  since I tossed one set in the trash as all they did was disintegrate whereas the home made decals just looked brown in comparison to the GW decals, and were also shelved (but not tossed as the red decals I used on the astral claws are also on that sheet). This was more or less a 2-day disaster/reversal of progress which is why the pauldron with the (once again) white tactical arrow is so much darker than before.

I had hoped I could use this stuff in lieu of dry brushing but as I'm still in the testing phase, I think I'll try dry brushing that marine on the left before applying the wash to see what sort of effect I get from the two methods combined. Needless to say this stuff is all a very much 'work in process'. I have a few more marines base coated, and thus I think that the Hounds will now be the principle victims of this learning process. 

The Desert Wolves

o/

Picking up from where I left off in my last post:

The Desert Wolves. 

Sadly, no photos exist of this army so I'll just be going off of memory, though I do recall using the above icon as their chapter symbol. The Desert Wolves were one of the first armies I sold on eBay and as I recall, their new home was in the US Virgin Islands. Looking into my eBay profile...I joined in the year 2000, started selling stuff a year or two later...so that would date the army to around the turn of the century which was 3rd edition 40k.

As for their 'fluff' here's the gist of it:

A Red Wolves strike cruiser enroute to some warzone or another was thrown off course due to a warpstorm and crash landed on an ork infested desert world (yes, it was GORKAMORKA). Cut off from the imperium, hopelessly outnumbered, and trying to cleanse the planet with their limited resources, the Red Wolves had to evolve in order to survive. It was found that their red armor attracted Orks like moths to a flame, so they had to resort to using desert camouflage. 

At some point in their years of isolation, they renamed themselves the Desert Wolves. Eventually the ragged survivors were found and reunited with the rest of their chapter, but by then they had deviated so far from the Red Wolves in nature, that they were instead given a strike cruiser and struck out on their own as a new, separate chapter.

*****

The bright spot of the army was in my opinion their tanks. Festooned with fuel tanks, jerry cans, and boxes of supplies and stowage to the point that my Imperial Forestry Service Rhino looks kinda sparse in comparison. They were essentially the space marine equivalent of the Long Range Desert Group which I'm sure you all find shocking given the name of this blog.

After much though I've decided that I'd rather not revisit the army. The paint scheme is already different anyways. i.e.: bright fucking orange as opposed to a desert tan. Whilst I loved the way my Desert Wolves' tanks looked, I could never get the infantry to look right and was always frustratingly disappointed in their appearance. Not that I actually recall 20ish years later, but that is likely the cause for my selling off the army.

I found a sheet of black tactical arrows, so will go back and reapply those I think.

These first few marines were intended just to test out contrast paint and my new weathering washes, nothing more than that. That said...I've been gravitating towards the Hounds of Demos, an old, obscure canon chapter that pretty much exists in name only. Like the Silver Drakes, this suits me fine as it leaves me room to do with them as I please. Thus their odds of achieving at least a functional kill team is pretty good, whereas full on army status is probably 50/50 at best... 

Exploring the unexpected rabbit hole of Gryph-Hound Orange contrast paint...

This is the culprit!

A few months back I bought a bottle of Gryph-Hound Orange for a project that was summarily shelved and ebayed within a week of so of spending $$$ on the paint for it. Why? Because me. That kind of stupid shit seems to be what I do best. Anyways, having finally finished the Silver Drakes, I then found myself with about 4 projects that I wanted to start at once. 

I knocked a small one out partially (sorry, not really blog-worthy at the moment), until I came up against the realization that I wiped out my can of matte varnish on the Drakes. Furthermore my new weathering washes (more on them  in a later post) are best used with gloss varnish which I haven't bought in years. Thus a trip to the FLGS was needed, but due to my schedule this was not immediately an option. As of this writing, I still haven't made it there. 

Somewhat mentally paralyzed I reacted as I so often do, by ignoring my to-do pile and instead working on something else entirely: contrast paint. I grabbed two white primed marines out of the horde that Kushial gave to me and summarily slathered 'em down. A bit too heavy as it turns out given that it made a bit of a mess around their feet. Nonetheless they looked pretty good for a base coat and as advertised it was damned easy to apply for a good, full coverage.

My new dilemma marines.

Real Life brought hobbying to a stop yet again for a few days and somewhat dangerously, in the back of my mind I found myself left with a quandary: What the fuck am I going to do with orange marines???

Start a new army (duh) assuming the rest of whatever paint scheme I come up with is also quick and easy. So, with that in mind...to the google!! Searching for: 'Orange Space Marines' whilst pointedly ignoring all references to homebrew UT marine armies (yes they do sadly exist...I've seen them on the table top in Knoxville). 

Not much really caught my eye, so I decided to create my own chapter and it is at this point that I should remind you to remember that all I have is two base coated contrast test/technique learning marines!

Yes this is how my brain works*.

Looking thru my decals and settling on the Space wolves decal sheet for some dumb reason the name search was on:

Helhounds/Hellcats spelled with both one and two 'L's (using the blood claw paw decals, sadly there's only one black paw per sheet...moving on)

Fire Wolves

Burning Wolves

Inferno Wolves

Only to be followed by the realization that I really just liked the image below which I found early on in my google search for any pre-existing chapters using the above names yet haven't any hope in replicating in any way...

Pure awesomeness!

Giving up I finally just settled on resurrecting one of my long defunct (pre-blogging) homebrew space marine chapters (yes, I've had several):  The Desert Wolves.

I was about to go on into my recollections of the Desert Wolves, but hell that'll be a likely long-winded blog post in it's own right. So I'll do just that as a follow up here in a bit...after I get some more paint on those two orange marines above, and then decide on whether or not this is a project even worth following up on or not.

*It's a form of madness really...

The WHOLE Silver Drakes chapter is painted!!!

For the first time in my entire gaming career, I've managed to fully paint a collection of one particular faction! Yes the first time ever!! 

Don't get too excited though, as I only have eight minis in said collection...and it is at this point the majority of new visitors to this blog will mutter something about 'click-bait' and close the window...my whereas 'regulars' knew it was a joke as soon as you read the title.

Indeed, rather than sound as impressive as my title made it out to be, it has taken me what-3 weeks to paint 3 Primaris marines? Impressive indeed.

The squad as a whole.

Well, I think that that's a Blood Claw icon.

I think they look good and am pleased with the end result. Of particular note is Blood Claw icon on the sergeant's right greave armor plate. It seems that at some point in this marine's career he fought either alongside or directly in service to the Illustrious Space Wolves chapter. Their influence is apparent as he is the only one of my Silver Drakes to be specifically armed for close combat. Indeed, outside of kill team the only hope these marines have of seeing battle is to fight alongside of another allied force, such as Neverness' Wolves. 

Its hard to see, but the jaw is
laying just behind to the skull.

Another detail which isn't quite as easily discernible when photographed (at least by me), is the sergeant's helm on the one bolter grunt's base. So desperate is their fight against the Nids that rather than even pausing to retrieve the skull and helm of this lost battle brother, he's is merely stepping over it. No doubt it's position will at the least be recorded for later recovery.

Anyways, as the *whole* chapter is now painted (...snicker...), I suppose it's only fitting to finish this out with full chapter pic:

Technically a lieutenant and one Intercessor squad is a battle-forged patrol list...