Knights of the White Wolf

Work on the old school Empire Knights continues, this time a small unit of Knights of the White Wolf, Templars of the Cult of Ulric.  A much smaller unit that the knights Panther, but still took a while with all the interruptions of Christmas - my painting area had to returned to its original purpose of a dining table!

I have painted a unit of White Wolves before, converted from the plastic knights kit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/the_grey_area/602634864/in/album-72157594344276325/

As with the Reiksgard and Knights Panther, I wanted to reflect the 'classic' paintjobs, but in my own style.  Here's how they looked on the cover of the box when released under 4th edition Warhammer.

I decided I wanted to go with the very white pelts, which fits the name and the look of actual Arctic Wolves (which ironically are smaller than their other wolfy brethren), and the darker armour.  I was unsure about the red horse armour; the only other time I have done completely coloured armour was for my daughter's 'blue knight'.  I also find large areas of red challenging, and I found the original colour too bright.  In the end I decided to try it out as a challenge, and use a darker shade of red.  The white hammer shafts were right out though, they look ridiculous!  

I don't quite have one of each model produced.  Whereas most of the knight ranges consisted of a Grand Master, standard and two 'trooper' models, the white wolves had three basic models.  I still need to source the one holding his hammer two handed (I've already done the Grand Master in my old unit).

 

 

 The old GW models look to have been painted in a shade of dark grey, but I wanted to stick with metallics.  The look I wanted was of armour that had been well cared for but still exposed to the elements.  Historically 'munition' type armour was often heat treated, making it darker, and/or rubbed with grease of lanolin to protect it from tarnishing.  The result is a dark metal, with a hint of brown.  To achieve the effect I started with a black undercoat, then basecoated with GW Boltgun metal.  To this I applied washed of Nuln Oil and Agrax Eartshade.  I then used Vallejo Chainmail Silver to highlight any parts of the armour that would rub and wear.  The unpainted parts of the horse armour were treated the same way but without the Eartshade, so that it would look subtly different.

The barding was, in theory, simple.  I used Vallejo Game Colour Red Gore for the base, highlighted with a GW red.  What I hadn't accounted for was putting thin red onto a black undercoat!  It took around half a dozen coats to get even coverage on the large areas.  On the neck of some models it actually helped to develop shading, so pros and cons overall.

The standard is scanned and printed from the original White Dwarf article, as with the other units.

Pretty pleased with the result overall!

Next up I think will be a nice simple single figure as a 'palette cleanser'.