Finished - Deathwatch Wolf Scout

We have our first game of the new Deathwatch RPG group next week. Of the 5 other people that expressed interests in playing all but 2 canceled. One was a seasoned GM but knew nothing of the 40k setting. I was really sad to see him drop out and hope he comes back. We are going to start with two solid players and hopefully add two more. 

I had rolled up a character even though I see myself being the GM until a challenger appears. I strategically chose the Wolf Scout advance for the Tactical Marine so that when I don't want to role-play him, I can have him sneak off to "scout" leaving the PCs to do the heavy lifting. 

The advance costs 200 XP and allows the player to use Perception for Concealment, Shadowing and Silent Move so that they can benefit from the Wolf Senses Solo Mode Ability. It also take some of the emphasis off of the social aspects of the Space Wolf. I am not particularly adept at playing a "face" character and would feel uncomfortable in that role. 

The Deathwatch Scout Armor has zero Requisition and many advantages  over Power Armor. For starters, rather than taking a -30 penalty to Silent Move, it makes him harder to detect by technological means (I might want to house rule the +10 to Concealment tests that regular Scout Armor grants). In addition for a beefy 20 Requisition, you can get a Camoline Cloak that grants an additional +20 to Concealment tests and makes the Marine harder to hit with ranged weapons. 

For this mini, I selected an old Sargent Tellion mini that was missing a head. I substituted a Space Wolf Scout head from the plastic sprues. I probably should have given him a knife and Stalker-pattern Boltpistol rather than the Stalker-pattern Bolter, but I didn't want to waste the Bolter bit. I never would have used it again. 

Dremeling off all the Ultramarine symbols was a pain in the ass. I really wrecked the left knee but covered it up pretty well with the paint. I also ripped off a few rivets on the armor and the weapon. I think that I covered my mistakes up pretty well. 

The conversion that I am really proud of is the grid pattern that I carved into the left shoulder. I did that with nothing more than a scalpel blade, patience and time. At no point did I slip and savage myself and that is the part that I am really proud of. 

For the color pallet, I knew I wanted to go with muted, subtle and dark tones. I knew the armor was going to be black and had a pretty good idea about how to do that. I knew that I wanted to make the body suit a dark color but not black or grey. I ended up using Stormvermin Fur. With some trial and error washing and touchups of more Stormvermin Fur, I eventually got the result that I wanted which is dark and muted but still contrasts with the black armor. 

I have never seen a camo pattern painted well on cloth and elected to go with solid colors. I somewhat foolishly chose to paint the outside of the cloak the same color as the bodysuit and then the inside of the cloak black. I made this choice because the cloak runs up against the bodysuit on the front and I feared that it would homogenize too much. The black in front also helps to darken down the front of the model that has pretty much all the bright colors while the lighter Stormvermin Fur on the back of the cloak, brightens up the back of the mini. Otherwise, from the back, the mini would be very dark and boring. While it does not make much sense to have the darker color inside and the lighter color outside, I think that the composition of the mini turned out better because of these choices. 

Looks like this mini goes for about $15 on eBay. The paintjob is simple but took a fair about of time. It is probably worth $15. The conversions and bits are worth $10 considering time and detail. Total value is $40.