These are scratch-built so none of the usual provenance notes. The two outer wolves are 1983 Ral Partha sculpts I’ve had rattling around in one of my project boxes for years (not sure on the sculptor this time around but it’s probably Tom Meier) and the central “bit” is a metal Dire Wolf head from Citadel circa 1999-2000 (sculpted by one of the Morrisons, my money’s on Trish).

I’ll probably come back and add a new photo later – I like using yellow backgrounds for my NEON VIKING projects but don’t have the backdrop at home.

This group of miniatures was an exercise in using what I already had in my overflowing closet rather than sourcing new miniatures. I needed some appropriate figures to represent “Ulfwerenar” (shape-shifting Norse wolfmen) in my Warmaster army. Since my army is themed as NEON VIKINGS, I felt that the Ulfwerenar, being a special unit, were an opportunity for something out-of-the-box (which ironically ended up consisting mostly of boxes).

At one point in my distant past, I wanted to design a board game. I acquired a variety of pieces (pawns, dice, tokens, wooden cubes, etc.), proceeded to do essentially nothing with them, and recently dropped them into the “FREE” bin at my work for a customer to take. A few days later I fished the wooden cubes back out of the bin and reclaimed them for this project as I had a vision.

In a pinch, I could also use the miniatures as ASTRAL HOUNDS in games of Rogue Trader as well. This illustration definitely lives in the back of my mind and I’m certain it influenced this project.

I hacked two metal wolf/hound miniatures in half, as I wanted them to be “emerging” from a cloud of wacky neon cubes, then grabbed my power drill and set to work pinning all the shapes together into interesting arrangements (I don’t usually use a power drill but this time it made sense to me). The metal head bit just got trimmed back. Baking soda is a huge help when doing projects like this, as a little sprinkle on wet super glue hardens it almost immediately. I would have been sitting around all day waiting for parts to dry without the baking soda.

I pinned ’em to the bases, applied some super glue and sand for ground texture, and then sprayed everything with a coat of gold spray paint, followed by a “from-above” spray of black.

I tried using fluorescent colors straight over the black but boy howdy is that difficult. Fluorescent colors are generally best applied over white – they are quite translucent so work best as a “glaze” coat over a bright base. So after wasting half an hour seeing how far I could get without applying white first, I then asked myself “why am I avoiding white?” and changed my approach.

I quickly settled on brushing in some white highlights on the raised areas of the wolf figures, edge highlighting any parts of cubes touching a blackened face, and using a watery white and a wet brush to create some interesting “fades” with tidemarks on the cube faces themselves. Once that was done, it all got a very thinned layer of Hexed Lichen (my favorite Vallejo purple) – it’s a very strong color with some serious pigment power so when I say “very thinned” I mean it! On top of this, I added some white highlights once more on edges and wolves, then added the tiniest amount of fluorescent pink in some spots.

Mephiston Red on the bases (my favorite red – a Citadel paint, which I don’t often use), a bit of white paint splatter, some 4mm Neon Tufts, and black paint on the base edges were the finishing touches on these minis.

Five colors (black, white, red, purple, pink) and two spray cans (gold and black) were all I needed for this paint work.

That was a lot of words for a relatively simple project but I hope you enjoyed the read.