Oldhammer Space Wolves collection
In this post I will be touching on my oldhammer Space Wolves collection! When I moved to my secondary school, another chap was into 40k and we swiftly became friends. I acquired a couple of miniatures to start painting before stumbling onto the Space Wolves. Unfortunately, the early days of my Games Workshop painting is very, very patchy. All I know, is that I painted these two Wolf Guard terminators very early on.
By the looks of it, I had literally just painted them only Space Wolves Grey. It looks like that back then, I knew nothing about primer, as I can’t find any evidence of it. I painted each colour in one layer as well, probably going over it again if it was patchy. I looked here and found some images over on this excellent blog for oldhammer. Looking at this post, I believe I would have purchased the Space Marine box set (image from that blog)
Funnily enough, I still own all of the inks from the Expert paint set. The few paints that I own from his era still work fantastically, certainly much more so than the more recent paints. As mentioned in that post, I will be ordering more paints from the original creators of the paint, Coat d’Arms.
Sometime after I had purchased the Expert Paint set, I painted this Space Wolf scout:
Here, I moved on from using Space Wolf grey as the base colour. Here, I only used Blue Grey as a base and somehow neglected to use Space Wolf grey at all! I went around with inks and shaded the majority of the lines with black ink(?). I hadn’t learned about layering and highlighting by the looks of it, or even much tidying up after inking, for that matter! The hair and Aquila were probably done with Fiery Orange and then inked with Lava Orange ink. Back then, skin for me was always Bronzed Flesh and then either Rust Brown or Flesh Wash!
In the Summer of 1996, I painted Ragnar Blackmane (with orange hair!) and Njal the Stormcaller. I had previously painted Ulrik the Slayer but unfortunately I can’t find the mini for him!
My painting had progressed, base coating in Blue Grey and some sort of edge highlighting with Space Wolves Grey. The mini was inked and tidied up, although could certainly have been improved, especially on the face. The basing remains the standard Goblin Green and flock which seems to be the way everyone, or the majority, based minis back then!
Further Collecting
I know that somewhere in my collection I have an original set of metal Blood Claws, Grey Hunters and Long Fangs. I had painted the first two and the Long Fangs definitely remain unpainted. These Long Fangs had the heavy weapons resting on their shoulders, personally, I dislike these heavy weapons, they just don’t look correct. Oldhammer, which is what these models fall into, is not always a hit for me and these models are not a hit. I will be stripping all of my Space Wolves, except for maybe Ragnar and Njal, and repainting them. To re-ignite my oldhammer Space Wolves collecting, I would have to locate an original Ulrik. If this were to happen, I may strip the lot and have a small Space Wolves Force. All I would need to do, is round out the Wolf Guard, find Bjorn the Fellhanded and get some more scouts!
I shall probably have to revisit this post in the future, or maybe do a second part to it as and when the time happens!
