Why would you make these a Kickstarter Exclusive? They’re wolves, FFS.

Or more correctly, the Giant Wolves add-on boxed set from the Conan Kickstarter that I painted some barrels for recently.

Anyway, I’d selected these to take a look at alongside the Accessory Pack, and on opening them up was really quite impressed with the models inside. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos of them before priming or adding paint, (The render above is as good as I have, I’m afraid) but they were really a nice surprise and on par with the fine details of the stuff in the Accessory Pack. Since furry friends are usually on the easier side of the painting spectrum, and inspired by Subedai’s recent success in getting Conan’s stuff painted, specifically his Hyenas, I got busy with them pretty much immediately.

I initially primed them with Tamiya Grey Surface Primer and no real plan, then came inside to google some wolf images. On doing so, I decided that they would look good with a lot of white involved, and so re-primed them from each side with Tamiya White Surface Primer while leaving them a little darker with the grey down the back.

Once I got them inside I sorted the bases firstly by supergluing some small shards of slate down, and once that was done, I used the sample of “Area 51” scenery glue kindly sent my way from Kibo to affix the sand. I almost always prefer to use PVA because of the higher surface tension of PVA, but given that these models are pre-fixed to their bases, something with low surface tension and flow was much more useful, and the Area 51 was perfect for the job.

Next, I added some Old Citadel Bronzed Flesh (round HMG pots, baby) thinned down to add some buff tones to the fur. Following that it was a combination of a half-dozen photographs of wolves from Google Image Search and painting – utilising a mix of drybrushing and fine detail brushing in various combinations of Vallejo Model Colour Basalt Grey .869, Sky Grey .989, Reaper HD Arctic Grey, and Vallejo’s airbrush Black and Schwarzgrau primers, carefully brushed on.

The yellow of their eyes was painted with (discontinued) Citadel Foundation Iyanden Darksun, dotted with a pupil of black. A very-thinned down mix of brown and black was dabbed onto their paws to darken/dirt them a little in contrast to the majority of their pelts. As mentioned, I used various photo references as guides to painting their pelt and facial markings, taking note of the variations of colour and pattern that can be found inside even a single wolfpack with the intent to create models that (can) work as individuals while retaining a unified and natural feel for the entire pack.

A few adventurers face off with the wolves to provide a scale reference.

Models like these can of course be used in pretty much any fantasy-esque game, from Pathfinder to Warhammer to 40k to Kings of War. And so they shall be.

I took some additional pics of the wolves on the Urbanmatz Snow Territory Mat recently, so I’m adding them in here.