I picked up these wolves over a year and a half ago when I picked up the Fangs of the Blood Queen Dawnbringers box. I needed the Fell Bats for Night Wars and that was a way to pick them up - and some other Soulblight Gravelords stuff - at a bit of a discount! I just didn't get to painting the Dire Wolves... (or the vampire that came in the box, for that matter!). Now that I have a copy of Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Nemesis on the way, I finally found some motivation to knock them out quickly... I think what kept me from getting them done was colours - I agonized over how to to a pack of wolves with some variance in colours... This week I decided, fuck it, they're evil undead fantastical wolves from a fictional realm.... they can all be BLACK!!
Dire Wolves!
ALL of my other Soulblight Gravelords models are on flagstone bases, but that felt like it might look odd for these - especially since many of them had large boulders incorporated into the model and I thought they'd look funny just sitting on the flag stones. I guess I could have made them look like rubble...? As it is, I did them all on rocky bases painted the same colour as the flagstone so they could blend in a bit and it COULD be rubble in a city OR it COULD be rocky mountainous terrain!?
Once I'd decided on just painting their coats black, these went VERY quickly!
Most of the Vampire Heroes I have are named characters of the Vyrkos Dynasty. The fluff suggests some relationship with wolves - like maybe they're descended from Wolves or something? Belladamma Volga (one that I don't have) can have a meatshield of Dire Wolves. When I have megalomaniacal dreams of possible armies, I sometimes think of an entire Soulblight Gravelords army based around the Vyrkos Heroes and just packs and packs of wolves... It would probably be total crap as a competitive army... but it would look cool and be very thematic!
(Well now I HAD to math it out... If I picked up Belladamma Volga and Ivya Volga - the two Vyrkos characters I don't have - I'd need another FIVE packs of Dire Wolves to make a 2000 point army... and that would be just a bit under $500CAD...)
It felt like they were HUGE while I was painting them..probably because, in my minds eye I was comparing them to ancient metal Wolves I had...
I think the one on the round base is from Westward Productions and the goblin wolf-rider is a metal Marauder Miniature from the 1990s that I still haven't stripped and repainted!
I'm not suggesting this is BAD thing. I think it is apropos that they be HUGE and TERRIFYING... they are DIRE wolves, after all!!
Comparing them to modern Vyrkos Dynasty Vampires, though... they're kind of perfect!
With Radukar the Wolf
With Kritza the Rat Prince
With Lady Annika
Somparing them to the Vampires on their flagstone bases, I kind of feel like maybe I need to hit the bases with another dry-brushing of a slightly lighter grey...? to make them match the tone of the flagstone a bit better - but also seeing them on the game table, it will make a bit better contrast between the bases and the wolves... Will I get around to doing this any time soon...? Maybe...?
I still have the Vargheists, a unit of Grave Guard, and the Necromancer to finish up for Nemesis, but we won't be playing for almost three weeks, so I'll easily get those done. The Vargheists came with the Soulblight Gravelord Bloodcrave Hunt Spearhead army, so getting them done will get me a bit closer to finishing those as well - I'll just have the five Blood Knights to finish up! (Then we'll see some Vamp-on-Vamp violence versus Orion's Soublights!)
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