Oathsworn Knight

I have finished the Imperial Knight, after about a year, and am pretty happy with the result.

He is Sir d'Aubigny, pilot of Accipiter Ferox, in a reference to one of my favorite books from primary school Knight Crusader by Ronald Welch. In that book, the protagonist Sir Philip d'Aubigny bears a black hawk on a white surcoat, which I thought was fitting for House Hawkshroud's newest Oathsworn.

He bears the skull and wreath of the Oathsworn, rather than the Imperial Aquila - this symbolises the honor or death of his Oath - currently sworn to the Space Wolves astartes.

Thanks to magnets, he can take the field as either an Errant or Paladin. I don't think I'll be looking at the new carapace weapons in the new kit.

I decided Accipter Ferox was originally built on Mars, and wanted the makers' plate to reflect that, as well as the reaper chainsword.

The base is the most elaborate I have done, but with this amount of surface area and the clean lines of the model I wanted to do something.

One of my recollections from reading Titanicus by Dan Abnett were the scenes with the warhound titans stalking through ruins, and so I wanted to capture some of that feel - a hawk is a hunting carnivore after all.

I used some bits from the GW 40k basing kit, as well as some barbed wire using GF9 wire and the metal star bit (no idea of the technical name) is made from two tile spacers.

I wanted the base to tie into my Space Wolves, so I wanted snow. Rather than my usual wood glue and snow mix (woodlands scenics), inspired by this tutorial I used satin varnish, snow mix and bi-carb soda.

Unfortunately in order to do the Hawkshroud heraldry as per the (old) Codex, you need the limited edition decal sheet, and even then you are locked into being sworn to the Ultramarines or the Imperial Fists neither of which I wanted. So I printed an image of the decal sheet onto A4, cut out the wreath around the Fists symbol and then (carefully) traced the dimensions of the wreath onto the left shoulder and free-handed the leaves of the wreath.

I then added in the Wolf that Stalks the Stars to represent the Oath to the Space Wolves.

So there he is, all finished and has even survived his first game without exploding horribly. Given neither the Knight Errant or Knight Paladin have changed significantly rules-wise, and I'm not going to be buying or painting another one of these I'm not in a hurry to buy the new Codex: Imperial Knights. I'd much rather put the dollars to some Skitarri that will be painted up to look like House Hawkshroud retainers (ie not red).

Despite the lack of posting, May has been busy hobby wise - I've managed to game for the first time in 2015, finished the Knight and a Drop Pod for my wolves and am starting on my friend's Dire Avengers, so I will have to post up some more stuff.