Twelve Days of Deathwing - Part Two

 Santa Claws Is Coming To Town...

I like to call the guy on the right "The Wolverine" where as the marine on the left has more of a "Ta-da! I have foot long knives on my giant fists" type of a pose.

Continuing the march of soon to be bone white Terminators, these two models are satisfying a desire I've had since I was twelve to field Lightning Claw equipped Terminators.  My first White Dwarf issue I ever bought had an excerpt from Deathwing covering the new to the RT era universe Terminator weapons Lightning Claws and Thunder Hammers. 

Ever since that article fired my imagination at a young age, I have been longing to include these weapons in my armies.  Fortunately one of my first major secondary market purchases made this long held dream possible.  The bodies of the above marines were picked up armless and on the cheap at Nova Open 2019, I think I got a bag of ten plastic Terminators in various states of armless disrepair for $20.  Yesterday I talked about how the same kit builds all of the Deathwing's unit options in the current game, and one upside to GW giving all the weapon options in one kit is that if you come across a deal on bodies later you already have the arms and heads to build some more complete marines.  The Terminator on the left in particular was missing arms, head and had a chunk of chestplate and backplate missing.  I've been quite pleased with how I was able to cut out the broken chestplate, replace it, and then green stuff the missing sections of back plate.

So these two models are the first two members of what will be a five man squad all equipped with Lightning Claws and one who will also sport a Cyclone Missile Launcher which is also coincidentally on the list of tween fantasies I've been harboring for my Terminators.  I've done a lot of dry fitting and posing before gluing to try and get the best dramatic looks for these marines.  I'll only have five with Lightning Claws in my whole army so I want them to look as exciting as I can with each of the five members of the squad.  "The Wolverine" uses the pair of Lightning Claws from the Deathwing Knights/Command Squad box set, while the Terminator on the left has the claws that come with the Terminator Close Assault Squad box set.

In what I recognize may be more self serving rationalization of the present, this is another project where I feel waiting more than twenty years to finally put together an army (or portion of an army) I've long thought about is making the realization of that vision a far better product than they would have been at earlier times in my gaming life.  When I was a teen/young adult, the idea of buying at least four or five blisters of hard to find metal Terminators just to get ten of them for $40 in 1990's dollars just didn't make any sense when I could get twenty plastic marines or a tank for that price.   When I got back into the hobby about eight years ago, it seemed crazy to spend more than $200 to get 20 plastic Terminators for the Deathwing force I always wanted.  It took several years of bargain purchases but now I have everything I need to build my Deathwing forces to to more than three dozen Terminators and the modeling skills to finally make more dynamic poses and better paint jobs a reality.

Tomorrow I promise to stop back door bragging about my bargain hunting skills and actually start talking about army lists and force composition for this project.