Wolves to the Slaughter
In the beginning, I never understood why Space Wolves got the special treatment of characters and special formations due to the lack of background material I had access to. And it was this reason that I began to hate the Space Wolves. This hatred was maintained and the reason why I used the Space Wolves for this project. Tyranids was selected as they were the ideal beasts to do the slaughter.
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The title of this project came from the phrase "Lambs to the Slaughter" and "Cornered like Wolves". I wanted to convey the helplessness and the slaughter of the Space Wolves and eventually settled on "Wolves to the Slaughter".
The first task was to set the scene. A mountainside was selected to trap the Space Wolves. My initial attempt resulted in a lava mountain as I used expanding foam to try and pad out the blocks of foam. Although it didn't look too bad, it was not how I envisioned. Going back to the drawing board, I used standard bubbly foam and eventually got the layout of it how I wanted. Later on I had to carve and modify it to fit the pieces into the scene.
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I used one of the old Carnifex for this project as the later version was way too small to rip a Dreadnought in two. A Dreadnought was literally torn in two using a pair of pliers. The Carnifex's lower talons were separated and then pried into place. Unfortunately too much playing about with one of the talons meant needing green-stuff to put it back into place. Some old wires I had lying around were used for the tear in the top half of the dreadnought to show that it contained circuitry.
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The Genestealer was one of the first models I began work on, but the last model I completed. This was the hardest piece of the whole scene. I had literally cut a Genestealer up into around six pieces and unfortunately lost one of the legs as it flew from my fingers and onto the carpet. When I eventually came back around to this, I ended up chopping up another Genestealer (expensive conversion to say the least due to the rarity of these models). Finally I managed to get the Genestealer in a pose I was satisfied with.
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Trying to do dead Space Marines was a hard task due to the static poses that they come in. I had originally hoped to have
numerous dead Space Wolves, but the only viable pose for dead marines is face down. So I ended up with only one. I used a Space Marine Captain and chopped it up into several pieces (legs, arms, bolter and shoulder
pads) to be able to pose it. Then I added the Termagant on top, twisting the head to give it a slightly different pose.
As Termagants move in packs, I added three more to a different base. I only selected three because of the limited space
available in the setting.
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The Gargoyle wings were cut from the original body and then carefully sliced in half. The model was cut in several places to make the new pose and the spread wings. This was a very fragile piece. The second Gargoyle was added as an after thought.
I tried to do more on Ragnar, but I was still a newbie at using the green-stuff. Although I didn't do much to the face, I did try to add the hair and the wolf on his back. The banners took quite some time to get right, but thoroughly happy with the result. The Lictor behind it had its limbs chopped and rebuilt so it was poised for an attack. Originally I had intended it to be mounted on the wall of the mountain, but would limit the model to the scenery so instead I mounted it on the same base as Ragnar.
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The Tyranid Warriors was originally supposed to be an old model of the Hive Tyrant. I only had one of the large versions of the Hive Tyrant and it was painted to a different scheme. The new smaller versions would not fit in due to the size of the Carnifex, so instead I had some fun with the Tyranid Models. I had created an albino 40K Tyranid many years ago carrying four blades and so I did the same with this model. The remaining two models I modified so it had the new scything talons.
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After Thoughts
Although I had envisioned a greater scene of destruction, due to the amount of different things I wanted to do, I completed the project as seen and entered it into the Epic Comms competition. There are still a few ideas that were left out because of time, resource and skill. Maybe in the future I will add to this scene, including more dead Space Wolves, widening the mountain-scape so I can add a newly purchased Hive Tyrant and also to top it off and ensure the slaughter of the Space Wolves, a Bio Titan hulking over the mountain side (edit - as this was added to the Tyranids on Parade, the Bio Titan was placed next to this).