When it comes to our wolf Priests, unless you get hold of Ulrik The Slayer and have him as a counts as bog standard Wolf Priest, or make your own Priest and chop Ulriks weapon off to use, your not going to have a very Space Wolf looking Crozius. I personally find that the generic Space Marine Chaplain just doesn't cut the mustard. I'm also a big fan of every single model in my army looking individual and unique. I wouldn't want Ulrik in my army and another one of him as a generic Priest.
To that end, I started Kit bashing my own Wolf Priests and making his priests mallet from weapons I had laying around my work station.
This's what I've decided to show you all in today's tutorial.
The Morkai Pattern Crozius Arcanum.
Named ,Obviously, for the twin wolf heads making up the business end of the weapon.
As you can see in the above image, this is quite a simple but effective conversion. you will still need a small amount of skill and control with a craft knife or scalpel, but should be achievable with most levels of ability. As we're only the second conversion tutorial into this series, I chose this one because of its simplicity. We will get to more complicated conversions and modelling over the next few months.
To Start with, you're going to need two weapons with a wolf head (see Below) a shaft /handle, with a hand and your choice of arm depending on what pose you want your priest to be in.
You don't have to, but I find it best, if you use two of the same weapon heads. This will ensure symmetry on both sides of the weapon.
To start off we need to cut the wolf heads from your chosen weapons. To do this we can either use a hobby saw or if you're more skill full with a blade, a new (sharp) craft knife.
Don't discard the bits your not going to use as they my come in useful with future projects. I have a plastic box full of off cuts that I'm always going through trying to find something useful. It will save you a small fortune on bits stores.
You could always make a new Thunder Hammer from the two hammer head pieces you have left over.
Once we have these cut off, all we need to do now is find a suitable handle, hand and arm to fit it to.
This will be the easy part of building your new Crozius. All we do now is glue it all together. You will notice in the images below that I have used a resin Axe handle for this new piece. This will need to be drilled, pinned and stuck with super glue to ensure a solid fix. you don't have to do this with a plastic handle as the cement should hold it together well enough. If you find it quite flimsy you could always drill, pin and then use the plastic cement. I usualy do this on some of the thinner, longer handles such as the Grey Knights warding stave with a large hammer or axe on the end.
All that remains it to allow to dry, affix to your Wolf Priest and Paint.
In the image opposite I used the frost axe from the Space Wolf box rather than the Thunder Hammer, just so you can see the difference without the hammers power unit at the base of the head. It was done in the exact same way as above. Remember don't throw away the discarded blades as these can be used elsewhere.
Here are a few Images of what they look like once painted. I have painted them in different ways just so you can see the variety between gold, gold and silver and also with lighting shooting from the wolf heads eyes.
The Above image is a crozius made from the frost axe and the image on the left is from the thunder hammer. Although almost identical in design you can see how they appear different, purely by an alteration in the paint scheme.
Please excuse the cross eyed Wolf Priest :) I converted the wolf helmet from the Space Wolves Pack so that the front opens and had a hard time painting the face once it was inside. He is Ulfr The Wang Eyed Wolf.
This method can also be used to convert different weapons. I do this to most of my power axes. I think that as they have the 'unwieldy' special rule they should look like they are hard to throw around. This is where those left overs will come in handy.
Thats all for this week Wolves. If anyone has any questions, please leave a comment bellow. Thanks for reading and I hope this helps you to create your own version of the Mighty Wolf Priest.
Wolf Lord Mikal