New Skyclaws! Pack Razcals!

 Hey everyone and Good Evening! WLC, Jarl of 8th here! Classes were suspended as of 5:17am and this presented an opportunity to create something that I have been contemplating on for a while.

Presenting my new Skyclaws! It is a 10-man unit led by a Wolfguard.

Pack Razcals ready to smash face!

SKYCLAWS

Skyclaws are made up of the most stubborn and headstrong Blood Claws from different packs. Most see being strapped into a jump pack as punishment but these individuals eagerly take it to be able to bring the fight to the enemy faster and earn more glory in the process. With chainswords roaring and pistols barking, they rush headfirst to bring the hammer of wrath to the enemies of mankind!

 THE BACKSTORY

Pack Razcals has seen the highest mortality rates in the history of Skyclaws as they were always given the most dangerous of mission even if it's deemed impossible. Assignment to this pack may mean two things: 1) your Wolf Lord really detests you or 2) your Wolf Lord believes in your ability to achieve the impossible in a short amount of time. With the assignment of Wolfguard Antonnidas to the pack, casualties have trickled to a stop for a while now.

I modeled some of the hair so expect 3 new hairstyles. I eventually plan to add some tattoos and some shaved head effect so watch out for it! :) I also added some back stories for each pack member. Enjoy!

Wolfguard Antonnidas Xang - one of the few remaining terran-born Space Wolves (need to model more hair for him)

Warrik - Newly assigned to Pack Razcals. One of the few who asked to be assigned.

Brandt Hjalmar, wielder of the Meltagun - The oldest of the pack and thought to be one of the original members of Pack Razcal. No one has seen his true face for hundreds of years.

Unn the Vain - was sent to Pack Razcals because his pack mates cannot tolerate his egocentricity. NEVER touch his hair!

Strom Greylock - Strom had served his time in Pack Razcals but requested to stay at the end of his term saying that life with the pack is more dangerous and exciting.

Anggred - the first and last to any battle, some whispers that he has the Mark of the Wulfen on him.

Bjarki - rarely utters a word. He is not as headstrong as the others and follows orders without question so it is a wonder to his pack why he was assigned here.

Dakken - has a fascination with grenades and explosions, good with hand to hand combat and would secretly stick a grenade to the enemy at the midst of it

Krilex - He loves the sound of his dual pistols and frequently fires them in a rhythm

Oddvar wielder of the Flamer - a costly error of his own doing during a mission had his Wolf Lord banished to Pack Razcals. He styles his hair using the flamer.

IN ENDING...

So there you have it! Skyclaws are good now because they are cheaper though I'm still not sure on how to run them yet as I have never tried them (but I already have an idea). One is a 10 man blob that would go about killing huge targets or as 2 5-man squads that could claim objectives quickly. One thing to consider is adding a Wolf Priest to the group as it would help offset their poor weapon skill of 3 (but then again, they'd be hitting on a 4 anything that has a weapon skill 4-7).

Feel free to write any comments or suggestions on the blog! Thank you for reading and see next time! - WLC, Jarl of 8th

The Wolf Lords

Hello once again and welcome to my blog! Classes were suspended for September 15, 2014 and that means a little bit of time to write and get the noise outside of my head. Still, it's not a vacation as the exams are not yet finished and the battle still rages on! Today, I'll be writing about the leaders of the Space Wolves, the Wolf Lords!

THE WOLF LORDS

The Space Wolves chapter is divided into 12 (or 13) great companies and each consists of a thousand warriors and is lead by a Wolf Lord. Each great company is personalized by their respective Wolf Lords; it is named after them and the insignia/sigil/badge of the company would be that of the Wolf Lord's choosing. He can choose to continue his past lord's sigil or create an entirely new one of his own based on the mythology or sagas of their home planet, Fenris. To add to that, the combat tactics of that company would adapt to the style of warfare most favored by their lord.

Wolf Lord Bran Redmaw (P.S. This is not mine)

My favorite example is the Wolf Lord Bran Redmaw - His company is called Bran Redmaw's Great Company (in the new 7th edition codex, they are now also called "The Bloodmaws"). His company's sigil is "the bloodied hunter". He favors the use of Grey Hunters for ambushes and outflanking maneuvers. There are other rumors surrounding this particular Wolf Lord, which would be discussed in the near future.

The Bloodied Hunter

When a Wolf Lord dies, his retinue or bodyguards, called the "Wolf Guard", would elect one amongst themselves to be the new Wolf Lord and again the name, sigil, tactic of the company might change. When the Wolf Lord has chosen his sigil, it is placed on a stone slab called the Grand Annulus, which shows the current living Wolf Lords.

The Grand Annulus

Wolf Lords are the equivalent to captains of other Space Marine chapters and the greatest among them is called the Great Wolf, who leads the entire chapter but has a company all to himself also. His position is depicted in the center of the Grand Annulus. When this Great Wolf dies, the new one will be elected from amongst the current living Wolf Lords.

Currently there are 12 living Wolf Lords

• Logan Grimnar, the Great Wolf - leader of the Champions of Fenris
• Bran Redmaw - leader of the Bloodmaws
• Engir Krakendoom - leader of the Seawolves
• Erik Morkai - leader of the Sons of Morkai
• Gunnar Red Moon -leader of the Red Moons
• Harald Deathwolf - leader of the Deathwolves
• Bjorn Stormwolf - leader of the Stormwolves
• Egil Iron Wolf - leader of the Ironwolves
• Krom Dragongaze - leader of thee Drakeslayers
• Ragnar Blackmane - leader of the Blackmanes
• Sven Bloodhowl - leader of the Firehowlers
• Kjarl Grimblood - leader of the Grimbloods

THE 13TH WOLF LORD

If you noticed, there is blank slate on the Grand Annulus. This space once belonged to Wolf Lord Jorin Bloodhowl (or Bloodfang?), leader of the "Wulfenkind" (or was it Wolf Lord Bulveye? There are conflicting resources regarding this). They have been presumed lost in the warp when they decided to follow and hunt down their arch-nemesis the "Thousand Sons" into that emperor-forsaken place.It also commemorates the companies that have been destroyed in battle, lost on campaign, or betrayed their brothers and the emperor.

IN ENDING..

Now what made me decide to write all of this down is my discovery of a particular Painting Guide called "Companies of Fenris". At first, I thought it was a money-grab. After all, who needs a painting guide when you can learn from others and the internet? There are a lot of resources such as forums, blogs, and youtube! But then someone reviewed the painting guide (link to the one who reviewed the painting guide - kudos to you good sir!) and it apparently contains fluff for some of the Wolf Lords, where there has been none before! To add to that, there are depictions/drawings of those Wolf Lords and the best part is, they can now be modeled! So as of now, based on current models, pictures, and the paint guide, the following Wolf Lords can be built or modeled accurately:

• Logan Grimnar, the Great Wolf - leads the Champions of Fenris
• Bran Redmaw - leads the Bloodmaws
• Erik Morkai - leads the Sons of Morkai
• Harald Deathwolf - leads the Deathwolves
• Egil Iron Wolf - leads the Ironwolves
• Krom Dragongaze - leads the Drakeslayers
• Ragnar Blackmane - leads the Blackmanes
• Sven Bloodhowl - leads the Firehowlers

Companies of Fenris Painting Guide

8 WOLF LORDS! This leads me to a project that I've been thinking for a while now - I'll be creating a series wherein I try to model and recreate these character models as best I can, so stay tuned!

Currently, I have no Wolf Lord models because I didn't think they were practical at first in-game but after viewing the new codex, they seemed to have bumped up in power, along with the new relics and a thunderwolf mount, they seem to be very viable and popular this edition so expect me to create one!

That ends this segment! Hope you enjoyed and learned something. Once again this is WLC, Jarl of 8th signing out :)

(P.S. - if you have any resources, pictures, etc of the other Wolf Lords not mentioned here, please do send me a comment or link about it! TY in advance ^^)

Warhammer 40k - My hobby

A number of people have been asking me about my hobby, my miniatures, and my figurines. Now it gets my nerd-on firing when someone asks but I suddenly hesitate to answer in full because I realized that I can talk about my hobby but he/she won't be able to relate due to the fact that they don't know the background or lore of the hobby. I might just bore them. All I can tell them is that I paint little plastic toys and play with them in a massive battle of measuring tape, dice, and wit. Now that's less exciting huh?

SO WHAT IS WARHAMMER 40K?

To delve into the background and tell you everything would take almost a day of proper explaining, especially for those who know that I tend to get side-tracked with all the stories in my head - time that either my friends and I don't have in med school. I recommend that you watch this video as this guy gets the setting or background in a nut-shell, under two minutes. The other videos would be 3-6 minutes as well so if you have a break, go and watch to learn something new.

And for the game itself..

And for some inspiring Space Marines in action!

For other sources, you can read the following links. These contain a lot of info regarding specific parts of the lore or universe of warhammer 40k.

Warhammer 40k Lexicanum - Wikipedia based resource for Warhammer 40k

Warhammer 40k by 1d4chan - If you want comedy to go with knowing what 40k is, this is the place



Trivia
1. There are a lot of factions in Warhammer 40k and I play the Space Wolves faction
2. You may know Warcraft 3 and the like. That is based off of this (basically a rip-off as some would say), only less grimdark and more popular.
3. There is some notion that only fat, sweaty, middle-aged guys play them. I'll tell you that a portion of that is true but the majority are not and the number of young players is steadily increasing.
4. You can make your own faction. That is the beauty of this hobby!
5. You still need to assemble the models and paint them.

Last Howl of the Wulfen: Mark of the Wulfen removed :'(

One thing that stood out to me from the new codex is the loss of "Mark of the Wulfen"

What is Mark of the Wulfen by the way?

Lore wise...

• imagine a far-in-the-future, enhanced, superhuman being, in heavy armor, then turn him into a werewolf.. I'm not kidding..
• It represents both the best and the worst of the Canis Helix gene of the Space Wolves (a mutation or degeneration as some would say). It makes them stronger but the downside is you can fall to this "curse" and lose yourself forever and become feral or a mindless beast (so they say).

In-game wise...

• It is an upgrade to a single member of  almost any unit or a model in the old codex costing 15pts
• it changes the attack profile of that model to D6+1
• all close combats attacks it does have the rending special rule but can't use any weapon profiles.

Adding this to the Wolf Standard, which is different now, this upgrade increases the potential of a single model to do damage. To me, not only the potential was lost but also the flavor/identity that made the Space Wolves SPACE WOLVES!

Summary:

Advantage of losing it (I'm trying hard to think of some)

• game is faster and more streamlined now and I think this is one of the aims of Games Workshop (GW). Many time I find myself confused over how many attacks I should roll.
• removes the randomness of the attacks
• GW has no models for it anymore I think and other 3rd party companies are making money of it by sculpting and selling their own models. No rules. No profit for those other companies.

Models by GW: It's sad that I don't have them and probably never will have them as they're old and out of production :'(

Model by other companies such as Mythicast. It is a good looking model and I understand why people would want to buy it. I'd buy it if I were able to.

Disadvantage

• no more potentially 9, with possible AP2, attacks on the charge (or counter-charge)
• no more potentially ripping out and destroying light armored vehicles up to AV12
• people actually scratch-built their own models for this! I did some on April of 2014 and now they're just generic Grey Hunters.

And now to present my finest Wulfens (or Wulvens? O.o)!
Yes! They have lore and commendations but they are still a work in progress (I'll update their pics as soon as possible)!

Beoric the Dreadfall

Beoric the Dreadfall

Unlike the other Wulfen of Bran Redmaw's great company, Beoric does not welcome the changes brought to him by the "curse". But once the wulfen overtakes him, only death (his or his enemies) can stop his blind rage. He single-handedly ripped a dreadnought open, pulled the writhing embryo from it's sarcophagus, tore it into two, and threw the carcass to the latter's battle-brothers. He howled in delight after. He never remembers anything afterwards.

Torik Ogrynsbane

Torik Ogrynsbane

He is the youngest to have the mark of the wulfen in the Redmaw's company and it seemed like he sought it all along. Unlike the others, his transition to and mastering the wulfen was second-nature and rare was the need to restrain him after the battle is over. Called the Ogrynsbane, he took on 5 Ogryns, which were the personal bodyguards of Yarrick. He felled two and wounded one before being knocked unconscious by the Yarrick's power klaw.

Koss

Koss

Koss has still to make a distinction for himself. He is the newest Grey Hunter to have the mark and is designated to the pack of the "Patient Killers", an elite and covert group of Grey Hunters handpicked by the Redmaw.














In ending, Mark of the Wulfen will be missed! We could only hope for a supplement for you but as they say "hope is the first step on the road to disappointment". - WLC