Warhammer 40k - Painting Progress on Ballistus Dreadnought and Space Wolf Techmarine

Good day everyone! Zak here from Cape Town, South Africa.

I am doing a bit of painting of Warhammer 40,000 miniatures and getting ready for the Sword and Board Tournament on the 2nd and 3rd of December.

What is Warhammer 40,000? Well it is a strategy boardgame that is constantly evolving. I started playing this game 20 years ago as a kid and now my own kids are learning to play it!

The game evolves and goes through Editions. I started in 3rd Edition and it is now 10th Edition, which came out around halfway through 2023!

Since the new edition dropped, I have been playing my Space Wolf army one way. I might collect a variety of Imperial Armies but when it comes to the Space Wolves, the Stormwolves stand on tradition!

I have been playing this army one specific way since 3rd Edition. I played them this way in 4th, 5th, a little in 6th and then I had a break and returned in 9th edition.

I revived the hobby for me and played the Space Wolves with the same core force. Some of the peripheral units may have changed and the points limits in the game went up, but the core remained the same.

Then 10th Edition launched and I was forced to make some adjustments and played my best version of the Champions of Russ Detachment as I could manage.

That Detachment relies on Space Wolf Characters completing Deeds Worthy of Saga to unlock army-wide bonuses.

Then a new Space Marine Codex came out and I have the ability to take any of the Detachments that are in the Codex. I then came across the Ironstorm Spearhead, a Detachment that focuses on Vehicles and Dreadnoughts, two things I have plenty of!

So I made the switch and it required me to make some changes to my list. Out with the Wolf Lord, Wolf Guard Battle Leader and their bodyguard of Thunderwolf Cavalry. This unit was kitted out to complete deeds!

Now no longer an issue, I could flip to Vehicle support and put in an Iron Priest and a Techmarine with Enhancements to buff the vehicles in my list. With plenty points to spare I added another Dreadnought! The Ballistus Dreadnought that came with the Leviathan Box set was added to my army!

Thus I have 5 Vehicles, 4 Dreadnoughts, 3 squads of Infantry and 2 Characters who remain on foot to support vehicles.

So now I need to paint the additional units to make the army legal!

Thus the Techmarine and Ballistus Dreadnought are getting painted!

The Ballistus has my basic Blue colour and I painted the base white so it looks like snow.

The Ballistus is a great fire-support Dreadnought, capable of great mobility while using Missile Launcher and Lascannon to shoot down enemies.

The Techmarine is being painted blue, not red! Techmarines are usually painted red because of their connection to the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Priesthood of Mars. However, Space Wolf Iron Priests do NOT return to Fenris with red armor. It has something to do with not offending the Machine Spirit of their Armor.

Even though this one is a Techmarine and the other an Iron Priest, they hold the same rank in Space Wolf hierarchy and thus I will follow with Space Wolf traditions!

I started adding in some of the metal details on the model. I first to a layer of Bronze and then Gold to give my gold colours a richer burnished feel rather than being too light and bright.

No the left shoulder is the blue marking side of my Great Company - the Stormwolves.

On the right is where a Space Wolf would bear his Pack Markings. In the case of this Dreadnought, I chose the White and Black of a Long Fang.

It makes sense that this fire support Dreadnought be a Long Fang when he still lived as a regular Space Marine.

I still have a bit of work to do on these models but I am happy with my progress so far!

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Cheers!
@zakludick

Hive South Africa