I was coming from a place of ignorance. Sure, I knew the
basic background behind the Knight Houses – but I knew nothing about my Knight. I had no idea what House, or
what purpose the Knight might fill, or how I would tie it in with my Space
Wolves. I hadn’t anticipated touching the thing for a little while, hoping to
let it gestate in the depths of my subconscious for a while.
It was important that it fit with my Space Wolves
aesthetically, but I wanted to do something other than just paint it Space Wolf
Grey. I also remembered I’d seen that the Freeblade Transfer sheet had
squid/kraken things on it and maybe I’d could use those. After all, Fenris is
famous for something else other than the Wolves, Ice, and Space Marines - Kraken!
I didn’t want a Freeblade, as I wanted the later possibility - should I ever
somehow find the time - to field an entire force of Knights, resplendent in
their house colours.
Things flowed naturally from there. Sea-green seemed like a
sufficiently different colour to my Wolves. Bronze and red would mean they’d
share trim colours, tying the two forces together. Orange would look great too,
as orange is the perfect colour to go alongside sea-green or teal. The plan was
to weather it heavily, make it really rusty. I had this image of it being
covered in sea-spray on its home planet, fighting horrible sea monsters to keep
the populace safe (and most importantly, productive!)
Disaster struck when I attempted to order that transfer
sheet though – it had long since sold out. Further, reading through the Imperial
Knight codex, I realised I would need a House Coat of Arms. I was up for the
challenge of making my own (I’m by no means an artist!). I’d read on From
The Warp about custom decals and it didn’t seem too difficult. Following a quick search for free-to-use images, and
time in Inkscape to make up my heraldry, it was done. I wanted to do something
more than just abstract shapes (already prominent in my Space Wolves force) for
the personal heraldry of the Knight. To complement the Nordic theme Space
Wolves use, I used a Celtic knot, with an idea of using a different knot design
for each Knight. One last touch was to put a wolf’s head on the pennant, to
symbolise the co-operation between this Knight and my Chapter of choice.
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| The Crest of House Teuthida - I tried to match the style of the GW designs as closely as I could |
Things didn’t go quite to plan! I found that Dullcoat wasn’t
good enough for sealing the ink onto the paper and the transfers were not only
terribly flimsy, but the ink ran too. I was running out of time by this point,
but thankfully the father-in-law-to-be offered a can of Halfords car lacquer. I
wasn’t entirely convinced, but I was desperate. Turns out, it was perfect. With
the magic bottles that are Micro-Set and Micro-Sol (and a little matte varnish
to dull the gloss after) I’d finally got the Knight looking how I wanted.
I couldn’t bring myself to rust it. The copper trim was a
perfect complement to the sea-green already. So, it’s the only Imperial model I
own that hasn’t been weathered.
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| I still can't decide on a name for him, but given how many times he came back 'from the dead' in his debut, I'm thinking 'Undying' or something similar will be part of it! |
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| I think I could have done a better job breaking up the metalwork, but seeing as I'm the one who will see this side most games, I can live with it! |
The Knight didn’t fair too well in its first outing. I
imagine this matches most people’s experience of taking out a model they’re
proud of for a spin! It was an epic battle though, facing off against serious
Tau opposition (including a Supremacy suit!). The Imperials couldn’t quite
carry the day, but House Teuthida fought valiantly, throwing Knight after Knight
into the fray… (we were playing Apocalypse, so I took full advantage of the
rule allowing me to spend victory points to resurrect a dead unit!)
I’m looking forward to taking it to battle again –
particularly against the daemon possessed Knight Dan has been working on for
a while now!
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