Showcase: Space Wolves themed Imperial Knight by ComradeQuiche

Hello All, My name is Shane Blomberg (AKA ComradeQuiche) and I am a product designer living in NYC. I just want to give a shout out to Stahly for giving me the opportunity to share my newest project here on Tale of Painters! I have been working on a Space Wolves army for the better part of 3 years now (on and off… with some big breaks between painting minis) When I read about the Knight Titan model I knew I HAD to have one! Luckily my wife decided to shower me with Warhammer gifts this Christmas, and the Knight Titan was among them! Right away I decided that the sons of Russ had to leave their mark on one of these ancient and fearful engines of war.

My “Iron Werewolf” is based off the standard Knight Titan kit, but with a lot of conversions, and a few custom designed and 3D printed components as well.

In regards to color scheme, I started my Wolves army about a year before all the new GW paints came out… So I was using all the old colors which they now no longer carry. I wanted to go for a more classic Wolves scheme, something candy-coated and very bright. Shadows are dark, and highlights are pretty darn light! I was tempted to go the opposite route and make them weathered and beaten similar to how GW suggested they be painted now but decided against it. I got into the game right when 3rd edition was released, so 40k still had a little more goof to it back then, and I wanted to play into that era of style and coloration.

When I first started to think of what I wanted the Iron Werewolf to be I immediately thought of 3D printing. As a product designer I work day in, and day out with 3D modeling software, so I figure what better way to blend what I do for work, with what I love to do!

My first thought about the Titan was “How am I going to differentiate this knight from all the rest?” I liked the gigantic chainblade that comes with the standard Knight kit but I didn’t think that Bjorn would approve of a simple chainsword appendage. I did a lot of online research and discovered a company called “Dreamforge” who makes a model called the “Leviathan”. This Claw component can be purchased by itself, so I ordered it, and modified it to fit onto chainblade arm (in fact I just chopped the chainblade off of the arm from the very base of the blade, then modified the claw a bit) I then modified the claw itself by glueing on some wolfy skulls, and also adding a bunch of rivets. I used “1mm no-hole beads” and a 1mm drill bit. I was happy with the claw itself, but no so much with the armor plating that covered it. So In 3D I drew up a new one, complete with banner, and a winged wolves skull.

The standard feet that came with the kit just weren’t wolfy enough for my liking. I wanted something similar to the warhound titan, or the forgeworld conversion kit for the space wolves dreadnough. It took me a while to get a shape and proportion that I liked, I ended up incorporating the golden edging on the bottom of the toes to tie it in with the rest of the armor plates found on the Knights body. The feet are magnetized, which means I can easily remove the whole model from its base for easy transportation. Because I wanted this knight to look like it is indeed ancient I added in extra rivets, reminiscent of the heresy pattern power armor. I also did this with 1mm no-hole beads. The wolves heads at the top of the shin plates were taken from a pair of thunder hammers found in the space wolves kit. A lot of 3d prints were made to test the feet (And all the other components too!) The first few looked goofy, or pigeon toed, so being able to print my iterations made the development process much faster.

The key component of wolf (and the hardest part to design) is the head itself. I based it off of the wolf head found on the front of the new sleigh. The head took quite a while to get right., It ended up replacing not only the entire head and mask, but also the smaller cowl found right above the titans head… The ears stuck out too far to use it! At first I wanted it to be a mask that covered the Knights skull-head, but as the design progressed I realized that it just wouldn’t cover that well as a mask using the actual knight skull, so I scrapped it, and remodeled the entire thing from scratch. The head is magnetized so it can be repositioned and easily removed. I also replaced the heavy stubber, and the shield from next to the Knights head, and replaced them with the twin linked assault cannons from the land raider crusader. Also many wolf icons were added to the top of the carapace, while a storm shield was used to fill in the empty semi-circle near the chest.

The shoulder pads were redesigned based on the rough dimensions of the existing pads, but with more gold filigree work around the edging, plus I wanted to incorporate the zig-zag pattern sometimes found on the marines shoulder armor. Chaos predator parts were used to add gaping maws to the tips of the exhaust pipes, while the armored ram was cut apart to add to the back of the model to give it a spiny look.

Since the Helfrost weapon system was introduced to the Space Wolves range, I figured I might as well invent a new class of the weapon! I wanted to create something that would do the Knight Titan justice, I call it the “Helfrost Annihilator” Everything from the shield forward has been designed from scratch, and fits snugly onto the standard frame that is included with the kit.

One of the smaller details I designed was the heresy era knee pad to go along with all of the other rivets that were added to the body of the knight. I wanted to give it an ancient and beaten look, which is why I chose an all-gold color scheme. A wolf pelt, and other wolf tails were added as talismans to tie together the over all theme.

All of the additional components I designed can be purchased here (note that the wolf head icon is not present in order to not infringe on GW’s logos).

At this time the Iron Werewolf is fully complete, but now that I have a taste for designing components and accessories for these miniatures I may end up doing another project like this in the near future!