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After about a month of waiting my Masquerade Miniatures Thunderwolves finally arrived in the mail yesterday, all the way from Germany. They need a lot of work yet, particularly involving the legs of the riders that will be attached to them, but for the most part I am very pleased with the models. There are plenty of gaps, which is to be expected in large metal figures, but they are conveniently located in and around the furry parts making the necessary sculpting much easier.

I did break one of them in assembly while attempting to bend a piece into shape, though as it turns out, the break was in a location that actually made the model easier to assemble and requires almost no cleanup. It snapped clean in front of the left rear leg, which allowed me to more easily position the left half of the body section and minimize gaps. I just need to reconstruct some fur and a tiny piece of the saddle cloth.

The sculpting detail is wonderful across the board, and the poses are quite dynamic, though I will say that these kits are not for novices. If you are not an experienced modeler and don't know your way around a bar of greenstuff or a sculpting knife then I recommend going with one of the other 3rd party kits out there. Anyway, here are a few pics.

Group Shot:

The broken piece, just in front of the hind leg:

And something for scale reference:


These things are big! Not as bulky as the Mr. Dandy ones, but just about as large in every other way. Much more realistic in appearance, and most of them are about 4" long and between 2.5" and 3.5" tall.

I'll be working on these for a while methinks, and I'll put up more pictures as things progress.

Pics not working.

I'm glad you got these though... easily the best on the market.

I actually dispise the Mr. Dandy and Mythicast ones... they look ridiculous.

FTL

Cant see them, upload straight to dakka?

The pictures should be fixed now

They are, now those are some meaty wolves. Nice and big and 40k-ish unlike some I have seen. Nicely painted swolves too

My god they are huge.

I can't see how Thunderwolves were (artistically) ever a good idea. C'mon GW,

FTL

They look really cool, cant wait to see how it turns out.

Holy mother of- ....ROBO WOLVES!


I like them a lot. I can't wait to see your space marines mounted up on them!

fasterthanlight wrote:My god they are huge.

I can't see how Thunderwolves were (artistically) ever a good idea. C'mon GW,

FTL

Not quite sure what you mean here. Artistically speaking I think a Space Viking riding a giant, mechanically altered wolf is an awesome concept, and the lore is pretty strong too. Wolves are extremely intelligent creatures and there is a lot of mythology involving them, so it's not a huge stretch to imagine a planet where higher forms of wolves have developed sapient thought, and could potentially develop a partnership or a bond with the superhuman warriors that dominate their world. Thunderwolf riders love and respect their mounts like family, and so if they are injured in combat it would make sense for them to ensure their mounts receive special treatment to repair their wounds and return them to fighting condition.

I think these minis do a wonderful job representing what I find to be an awesome concept, however from a purely convenience standpoint I really wish GW had come out with a set of official Thunderwolves. It would have made things a lot easier, but at the same time I am very pleased with the Masquerade set!

I just got mine from mythicast. I was glad they arrived after 5 weeks but disappointed because 1 got mixed legs that I had to dremel to make a complete set. (3 back legs and 1 front leg). Had to do a lot of scraping and cleaning to get bubbles off the mold. I need to do a lot of work on them but yours seem to be much nicer and cleaner.

Aldarionn wrote:

fasterthanlight wrote:My god they are huge.

I can't see how Thunderwolves were (artistically) ever a good idea. C'mon GW,

FTL

Not quite sure what you mean here. Artistically speaking I think a Space Viking riding a giant, mechanically altered wolf is an awesome concept, and the lore is pretty strong too. Wolves are extremely intelligent creatures and there is a lot of mythology involving them, so it's not a huge stretch to imagine a planet where higher forms of wolves have developed sapient thought, and could potentially develop a partnership or a bond with the superhuman warriors that dominate their world. Thunderwolf riders love and respect their mounts like family, and so if they are injured in combat it would make sense for them to ensure their mounts receive special treatment to repair their wounds and return them to fighting condition.

Also, wolves naturally fall in behind strong leaders, so it would make even more sense for sentient ones to align themselves with the dominant species. And people, as a rule, get very attached to animals- so of course they would tend to them with all the care that they would to their fellow Space Marines, if they were injured.

Wow those are huge Thunderwolves. I didnt know there were any 3rd party companies making them. Very cool cant wait to see them painted.

Aldarionn wrote:

fasterthanlight wrote:My god they are huge.

I can't see how Thunderwolves were (artistically) ever a good idea. C'mon GW,

FTL

Not quite sure what you mean here. Artistically speaking I think a Space Viking riding a giant, mechanically altered wolf is an awesome concept, and the lore is pretty strong too. Wolves are extremely intelligent creatures and there is a lot of mythology involving them, so it's not a huge stretch to imagine a planet where higher forms of wolves have developed sapient thought, and could potentially develop a partnership or a bond with the superhuman warriors that dominate their world. Thunderwolf riders love and respect their mounts like family, and so if they are injured in combat it would make sense for them to ensure their mounts receive special treatment to repair their wounds and return them to fighting condition.

I think these minis do a wonderful job representing what I find to be an awesome concept, however from a purely convenience standpoint I really wish GW had come out with a set of official Thunderwolves. It would have made things a lot easier, but at the same time I am very pleased with the Masquerade set!

I'm not talking about the fluff, lore or intelegence of wolves and their family ties. Anything can be justified though fluff. What i'm saying is that an 8ft spacemarine in full power armour, on top of a giant wolf just looks rather silly.


FTL

So I've done a little math, and considering head-height on a Space Marine model is about halfway up the saddle on one of these Thunderwolves, that makes them around 10-12 feet tall at the shoulder if they were full scale. Thats......disturbing.

Edit: In response to the above - To each their own. I like the aesthetic of it personally. As long as the proportions are right then I don't find any serious fault with it, since the animal would easily be strong enough to carry a Space Marine in full armor. Now it might be a little better for the wolves themselves to have armor, but I imagine that would slow them down considerably more than it does horses or other mounts, proportionally speaking.

Then again I play WoW and have always enjoyed the look of exotic mounts, so my idea of what is a good aesthetic might be a little off from the norm.

An update.

I just completed the upper torso of the first rider. Magnetizing these guys is like pulling teeth, but his weapons are completely interchangeable. I can equip him with a BP/CCW, CCW/SS, TH/BP or TH/SS. Now I just need to make sure I keep the polarity consistent across all of them so that I can interchange all of the weapons between all of the models. That was a mistake I made when magnetizing the flight stands for my Eldar skimmers.

Note that the legs have not yet been converted, and the torso is just resting in place. It will actually sit just a little higher when glued to the pelvis.



I am extremely pleased with the scale of the wolves compared to the Space Marines. Some 3rd party wolves out there are much smaller and the Space Marines riding on top look like they would break their mounts backs. That is definitely not the case here, considering the wolf in this picture is the smallest of the set. All the rest seem to be slightly larger in scale.

Now to assemble and magnetize the other five torsos......ugh!

Wow, awesome looking wolves. Hmm, I've been on the fence if I should do Thunderwolfs for my own army, but damn.... such nice sculpts.

Stanley Rubric wrote:Wow, awesome looking wolves. Hmm, I've been on the fence if I should do Thunderwolfs for my own army, but damn.... such nice sculpts.

They are very nice models, but they aren't cheap. The set of 5 is 89 Euros, and individuals are 18 euros each. I ordered the set, plus an extra of the "Alpha Wolf" (The one in the second picture on my original post), and the total came to 122 euros with shipping, which worked out to about $168 USD. It's not an inexpensive investment, but I think the quality of the models combined with how awesome their rules are is well worth the price, especially if you play competitively.

Looking good!

Aldarionn wrote:
I am extremely pleased with the scale of the wolves compared to the Space Marines. Some 3rd party wolves out there are much smaller and the Space Marines riding on top look like they would break their mounts backs. That is definitely not the case here, considering the wolf in this picture is the smallest of the set. All the rest seem to be slightly larger in scale.

This is the only thing that has ever bothered me about the idea of Space Marines on wolves. Unless it's a damn big wolf, the Space Marine will either flatten it or need to wear roller-skates while riding it, but these ones don't have that problem at all. In fact, they look pretty much perfect.