Hello folks, here I’m going to cover my Biel-Tan collection as it grows. Biel-Tan was my first 40k love back in the mists of time, but I’ve somehow never ended up with a proper army. I’m in the process of changing that now. How did that come about? I’m going to type it up because I find it interesting – the tale of a tween, an issue of White Dwarf and anti-40k parents – but it’s quite long and tangentially related to the topic at hand so I’ve put it in spoiler tags. Read on if you dare!
Spoiler:
I first became interested in 40k when I started secondary school (11 years old) and made some new friends who introduced me to the hobby. This was around 3rd edition era. One of them had rather a lot of Ultramarines due to his very generous pocket money, the other was starting Dark Angels. I decided that I needed to do something that wasn’t space marines and I can’t remember what led me to pick Eldar. Especially since there wasn’t the wealth of information online that there is now, and there was no GW store in my home town. All I remember is that another guy in the class gave me his copy of White Dwarf 236 – which is the issue that covered the release of the 3rd edition Eldar codex. It had various articles and designer’s notes on the codex by Gav Thorpe, a bit of fluff and a battle report – Biel-Tan vs Imperial Fists and Legion of the Damned.
I spent some of my pocket money on a box of guardians and a starter paint set at a local store – not even a game store, but they carried all sorts of model kits and a small selection of 40k. I built them up and tried a few colour schemes that 11 year old me thought would be cool – mainly involving reds, blacks and golds – but in the end I decided that they didn’t look as good as the models in that White Dwarf. So I repainted them as Biel-Tan. Badly. I thought you ought to be able to paint a unit in an afternoon with a handful of paints, no primer and a starter brush – I imagine a lot of us have similar stories.
A few weeks later I decided I wanted a Falcon, so I clutched my pocket money and headed off down to that local store. They didn’t have a Falcon. Disappointed me stared at the shelves for a while. I wanted something new for my army. There wasn’t much Eldar at all. I didn’t want more Guardians yet, so pretty much my only other option was Jetbikes. I didn’t have the Codex and didn’t know what the rules were, and I couldn’t see any guns on the regular jetbikes. I don’t know what would have made me think that there was a model with no offensive output whatsoever, but I did. So I bought two of the Shrieker ones – the jetbike kit with an extra metal shuriken cannon and metal rider torso. When I got them home my mum was surprised to find that I’d bought models that weren’t even the ones I’d gone in for. Perhaps she could see the beginnings of a plastic crack addiction. Perhaps she knew. Perhaps she was horrified at the way I was blowing my pocket money. She immediately banned me from buying any more GW. Nothing I said could dissuade her.
You know how being told you can’t have something makes you want it more? I wanted 40k. My friends at school got bored of it and drifted out. I was annoyed. They were allowed to collect 40k and they couldn’t even be bothered to! I read that old White Dwarf cover to cover so many times. It’s seared upon my memory. And throughout the whole issue, nearly every photo of an Eldar model was Biel-Tan. That issue fixed my idea of what Eldar should be, what they should look like. At the start of 3rd Ed, it was just after the plastic guardians had come out (16 man battle squad, £12!), and the 3rd edition Chris Fitzpatrick spade-head Howling Banshees (£2 each! Phone Mail Order now!). I know a lot of people hate the middle aspect warrior sculpts. I agree on the Dragons and Scorpions, they’re awful. But those spade-headed Howling Banshees were the only Banshees I’d known, so they’re the only ones that look right to me. Amazing the effect that a single issue of White Dwarf can have on a young mind.
Eventually when I went to University – to a city with a GW – I figured I’d start 40k again with my new found independence (but on a student budget). I just so happened to make friends with a guy in my accommodation block who was big into WHFB, and managed to convince me to do High Elves instead of Eldar. I don’t think I needed much convincing really, I was always interested in WHFB too and I’m still fond of that army. Over the years I built my High Elves, added Orcs and Goblins, and Lizardmen, returned to 40k with some homebrew Astartes, did a bit of BFG. But for some reason never returned to the Eldar. I dropped out of the hobby for 5 years or so. Missed the introduction of finecast, and the discontinuing of WHFB. Then I went to visit that same friend, who had just got hold of Death Masque. I sat studying the sprues in detail. The bug bit me again. I decided I was going to do Salamanders.
Another year later and loads of Salamanders and Deathwatch under my belt, I finally started hitting up ebay for metal Aspect Warriors. It was finally time to do Biel-Tan, the army that I’d wanted to do all those years ago. It was going to happen. I was ready.
So, I love Biel-Tan, want to finally build an army, and oh yes, I want to avoid Finecast wherever I can. Not making things easy for myself there, given the state of the Aspect Warrior lines. Over the last year or so I’ve been scrounging ebay for metal versions of the Aspect Warriors. Generally I’ve been buying the metal versions of the current sculpts – with the exception of the Howling Banshees where I’ve been buying the 3rd edition spade-heads. As I said in the spoiler wall of text, they were the current design when I first fell in love with the army, and fixed my idea of what Banshees should look like. At that point in time the other Aspects were all still the original Jes Goodwin sculpts, and since the current versions are essentially updates of Jes’ original designs they’re the ones I went with (honourable mention to the old-timer Warp Spiders!). I’ve also been scouring ebay for old metal seers. Biel-Tan isn’t particularly seer focused of course, but once again back when I fell in love with the army the Autarch wasn’t even a thing and seers look great in green and white. I’ve gathered together a ridiculous seer council of pretty much every Farseer and Warlock model that ever saw a wide release.
Which altogether means I’ve got a pretty good selection of metals to be getting on with. Mix those with the current plastic and it’s a lot of space-elf bodies. What’s the eventual goal? There isn’t really one. I’m more of a collector and painter than gamer (I’ve played exactly one game of 8th edition…) so I’m mostly just buying and painting things I like, while also wanting to be able to make a viable army out of it if the need arises. I also like many of us have the tendency to go overboard and buy far more than I ever strictly need.
Amongst the various things I love about the army is how varied the paint scheme can be and still be obviously Biel-Tan. The official models *usually* show guardians and wraithlords with white body and green head, while seers and wraithguard are usually inverted at green body and white head. Any of those variants can be used at any point. One squad of guardians white body green head, and another green body white head? Why not? Then there’s the vehicles, usually in a much darker green but there’s no reason I couldn’t do some in white, or white with a green stripe, or green with a white stripe, or…
I intend to paint the Aspects in their shrine colours, but those can vary of course shrine to shrine. Some I will paint in the same schemes that GW use in the main photo shoots, others I will create my own variations based on that Aspect’s wider colour palette. Sashes and the like will usually be green or white, to tie them into the army a bit more. Paints will be mostly Vallejo and Army Painter, with a bit of Citadel Tehcnical. Basing I’m going to do a fairly arid tan sort of basing, using AK Interactive Diorama products, to match with my Salamanders and Deathwatch. I know some folks pick a different basing scheme for each army, but I originally created this basing scheme with my Eldar plans somewhat in mind and I like the idea of my armies matching. Eventually I’d like to make a modular board that matches the basing scheme of my armies, if I ever find the time to do it.
So that’s the plan.
I've been working at this for a while already, and I've got a whole bunch of models in various different states of completeness. I'll start the thread off with my first four finished units. What better way to start than with my favourite 3rd ed Banshees? I've painted them in the same scheme as the ones in that very first WD that I fell in love with. A unit of 10 including an Exarch.
Next up, my first squad of Swooping Hawks. Again, 10 including an Exarch. These are painted essentially in the studio scheme. I'll probably craft an alternative shrine for my second batch when I get around to those.
My first completed Guardian squad. I always feel that a Guardian squad looks better when led by a Warlock, especially in Biel-Tan colours, so I've finished my first Warlock along with these guys. The heavy weapon platform is magnetised, even though I barely actually play the game.
And a Wraithlord. He's also magnetised on all four gun mounts and on the wrist to attach the Ghostglaive, so I could run him as any of the allowed weapon loadouts. I've seen some really cool re-posed Wraithlords around here, but this one is fairly standard I'm afraid. I'm pretty pleased with how the gradients came out on the Ghostglaive and the head.
Thanks both! I'm very pleased with how these have come out, though they were very time consuming to paint. I've got a few things in the nearly done stage, so I may well be able to update fairly regularly for a little while, then see how fast it goes once I've got those all finished.
It's largely because I was waiting to matt varnish a whole bunch of them at once, and now I'm just working through the final touches that I didn't want to be covered by the varnish - like metallics and spiritstones. Though having said that, the wraithlord's head still clearly has a bit of a shine to it in those pictures, so maybe I didn't get that much varnish on.
The others close to being finished are some Wraithguard, several Seers, some Dire Avengers and a War Walker. After that I've got plenty of Aspect Warriors and Seers primed and ready to slap some paint on, but so much to do that I suspect it will be a while before I get them done.
Cheers guys. I'll look to sort an army shot once I've got the other nearly-finished models actually finished.
The next ones that I've just finished off since posting yesterday are my first 5 Wraithguard. I considered putting some runes onto the cloth, but I kinda like how they look clean.
Also, because I find it interesting, I've still got those very first Guardians that I got back in 1999, back when the set was pretty new, "Battle Squad", 16 dudes for £12, no weapon platform. I painted them utterly terribly as most young painters do with their first models. I dug them out many years later (2006ish?) and wondered how much I could improve them just by going over and tidying up the paint that was already there. I only did that on a few of them as an experiment. So that means I've still got some that appear as they did when I first painted them, some that appear as when I "upgraded" them, and of course the brand new ones that I've painted recently. I think it makes for a nice image of progress.
I feel like our stories are mightily similar. My first collection was Harlequines and 15 years (7 armies and countless other projects) later I've collected a small force but haven't really finished the project.
I think maybe Eldar just benefit from a tonne of experience and maybe it'll be my magnum opus in my retirement.
You're Biel-tan are looking sharp, look forward to seeing more.
amazingturtles wrote:I like the progress picture, it's kind of funny in that the stance seems to get more determined from one end to the other, too.
youwashock wrote:Decidedly awesome. It is like watching someone's kid grow up.
Thanks both. Young me didn't put too much effort into posing the kit, so there were a fair few funny-looking ones in there. Then when I decided to 'upgrade' the paint on a few of them I think I picked the less-daft ones to work on. As a more *ahem* mature modeller the new ones were much more carefully posed - it does make for a double improvement I guess, in painting and building (the old ones had mould lines to make you shudder).
theCrowe wrote:I feel like our stories are mightily similar. My first collection was Harlequines and 15 years (7 armies and countless other projects) later I've collected a small force but haven't really finished the project.
I think maybe Eldar just benefit from a tonne of experience and maybe it'll be my magnum opus in my retirement.
You're Biel-tan are looking sharp, look forward to seeing more.
Glad to have reached a kindred spirit! I think you're right, all models benefit from more experience but something about Eldar seems like they feel that benefit a bit more than other factions. I can't quite put my finger on why, perhaps the sheer numbers of organic shapes in everything are a bit tougher to pull off well than the harder lines of some other model ranges. I'm still a bit confused about how I managed to go so long without starting a real Biel-Tan army. In a way I'm glad that I waited long enough that I could do it justice, but then on the other hand it's meant that all my metal models have had to come from eBay rather than off the shelf. Swings and roundabouts I suppose. There's something special about going back to your first army, I don't think any others can quite compare to the first one you fell for.
No new pictures for the moment, I've been too busy today to pick up a paintbrush. But when I do I've still got some nearly-finished models which shouldn't take much more time. Having this thread now gives me that little bit more motivation to get them done.
Some lovely looking eldar, and it's cool to see the comparisons to your older models. I tried the Biel-Tan scheme when I was 13, the guardians look pretty similar to your first one. Haven't actually gone back to them, maybe I should give them a tidy up!
Also, that's my favourite Oldschool Warlock miniature. Just dripping with classic Eldar badassery!
Looks great in Biel-tan greens and greys. (Mine's in a Siam-Han red and white)
Look at that stance! He's just poised and ready to strike. What a sculpt!
Awesome. Great clean work. Looking forward to seeing your war walker, massive soft spot for that model. I am tempted to follow you with matte varnishing, but worried my Black Legion will be too shiny
Fifty wrote:The progress shots are really interesting. I need to put some comparison shots up too, probably. Biel-Tan is a beautiful colour scheme, I think.
Indeed, like I said in the first post I love the variety and the ability to change around which colour is more dominant model to model. Dominant white with green secondary, dominant green with white secondary both work and are both used in official schemes for various different models. Compared to say yellow and blue, where which one is the more dominant is the difference between Alaitoc and Iyanden. It gives a lot of scope to change things around, keep things interesting and yet still be clearly part of Biel-Tan. Not to mention having all the Aspect Shrine schemes to play with. On the whole not an army I'm likely to get bored of painting.
Tyranid Horde wrote:Some lovely looking eldar, and it's cool to see the comparisons to your older models. I tried the Biel-Tan scheme when I was 13, the guardians look pretty similar to your first one. Haven't actually gone back to them, maybe I should give them a tidy up!
Thanks - the tidy up was a cool process I seem to remember, even though it's years since I did it. It felt like a great way to demonstrate my progress to myself at the time, that I could take something that I think I must have been pleased with originally and make it better.
theCrowe wrote:Also, that's my favourite Oldschool Warlock miniature. Just dripping with classic Eldar badassery!
Looks great in Biel-tan greens and greys. (Mine's in a Siam-Han red and white)
Look at that stance! He's just poised and ready to strike. What a sculpt!
He's my favourite too, which is why I finished him first out of all the old Warlocks I've got. They're interesting models in general since aside from the one holding the sword out in front they're all one piece and you can see the design constraints of trying to get the model 'flat' for the mould. You can usually tell that the pose is designed for the moulding process, but with this one that design constraint doesn't appear quite so obvious, the pose just looks great in addition to being easy to cast.
karimabuseer wrote:Awesome. Great clean work. Looking forward to seeing your war walker, massive soft spot for that model. I am tempted to follow you with matte varnishing, but worried my Black Legion will be too shiny
I'm really pleased with how the War Walker is turning out, and hopefully I'll be able to get it finished fairly soon. As for the varnish, I'm not sure what to think really. I used Army Painter Anti-Shine from a rattlecan, but it doesn't seem to have actually made that much difference to the sheen on the models and left a few stringy bits on the finish that I've carefully removed with tweezers where I've found them. I think I may have to experiment to find an alternative. If I eventually get around to getting an airbrush there's a few varnishes that I'd like to try that way.
So, no War Walker just yet but I have got some Dire Avenger photos. The pricing for a box of 5 annoys me since I'd quite like a fair few of these guys, but I managed to win one of the old boxes of 10 on eBay, new in box, for less than £20 - so that was nice. I built them up as two MSU squads of 5 with dual catapult Exarchs, since I figured if I ever get around to having a game that's how I'm likely to run them. I'd still like to get plenty more and make what I would view as a more 'classic' full-size squad with a Diresword Exarch - possibly with another squad or two of MSU and... well. One unit at a time.
I painted both of these squads in the same scheme. I painted them in a darker blue than I first planned, then decided to give it a more extreme highlight than I might normally, and I think it's quite effective.
First Squad
Second Squad
And a detail of the 2nd squad's Exarch's banner. I know that Aspect Warriors don't normally bear the markings of their Craftworlds - and I've always preferred them in their shrine colours rather than some folks who like to paint all of their models in the same scheme - but I couldn't resist freehanding a Biel-Tan rune on the banner. I think it came out pretty well. I've also tried to incorporate some subtle touches to tie them in, like painting the bit that runs down the middle of the shuriken weapons green to match all my others.
Not sure how keen I am on a big blown up picture though - while I think it shows off the freehand well it also shows up all the little flaws with my painting that you just don't notice with the naked eye - like just now noticing that I've missed the gemstone dangling from the shuriken catapult on both Exarchs. Sigh - I'll do those the next time I pick up a paintbrush.
Steadily working through this backlog of nearly finished models - more to come soon!
Good job on those dire avengers! The freehand on the banner is lovely, very well done and the darker blue is definitely a nice change from the normal shrine you see. MSU is the way to run them these days unfortunately, it's just so much better to spend points on Wave Serpents and Fire Prisms!
I remember when they changed the box from a 10 man to a 5 man and kept the price the same, absolutely ridiculous and it still is. I still have a box of 10 in my pile that I'll eventually get round to. GW chuck 5 man DA squads into a few of the Eldar boxes so that's a reasonable way of amassing them.
theCrowe wrote:Man, Dire Avengers. Still so cool. Your paint job is pretty sharp, and I really like your freehand banner. Nicely done indeed.
Tyranid Horde wrote:Good job on those dire avengers! The freehand on the banner is lovely, very well done and the darker blue is definitely a nice change from the normal shrine you see. MSU is the way to run them these days unfortunately, it's just so much better to spend points on Wave Serpents and Fire Prisms!
I remember when they changed the box from a 10 man to a 5 man and kept the price the same, absolutely ridiculous and it still is. I still have a box of 10 in my pile that I'll eventually get round to. GW chuck 5 man DA squads into a few of the Eldar boxes so that's a reasonable way of amassing them.
Thanks both. I'm very fond of the Avengers and pleased with these. I actually planned to make the blue lighter to begin with, but I started with some darker blue paints and liked how it was turning out so I ran with it. For future squads I think I'll do some variations - I quite enjoy the Sable Helm shrine (dark blue body / black helmet / white faceplate), so I might do something similar, and I also like the idea of a squad with dark red helmets and white faceplates. But that's a while off since I don't actually have any more DAs at the minute and plenty of other things in the painting queue.
And yeah I totally agree on how ridiculous the change from 10 DA to 5 DA in the box was. Despite the fact that I feel like a large number of DA's should be the core of my Biel-Tan collection, I'm not all too keen on buying the 5 man boxes even at FLGS discount, even though I'm often paying more per figure for the metal aspects on eBay. I'm still kicking myself that I didn't snap up some of those Skyblade boxes in early 2017 - the ones with 5 DA's and a Wave Serpent. I reckon I'll pick up at least one of the Christmas Battleforce since all the stuff in there I either don't have yet (Wraithknight/Vyper) or wouldn't mind more of (everything else). I'll see how far my willpower goes as to whether I stick to just one box. It's tempting to max out on discounted stuff, but at the same time I've already got a painting pile that will take me months if not years to work through so adding a lot more to it doesn't seem the smartest move.
Very crisp paintjob so far, very well done!
Biel-tan is not the easiest of Craftworld themes to paint, as white can really be a pain.
Even though I like to paint darker, more muted color themes on Eldar, it's great to see the "official" scheme for aspects done well.
Also read your story and boy did it bring back some memories!
I can remember borrowing some white dwarf - magazines from a library when I was ~12 years old. Browsing them on the floor and dreamt of buying all the cool models "someday when I'm old enough and have some money in my pockets".
youwashock wrote:Great looking Avengers. That banner is a marvelous touch.
Ezki wrote:Very crisp paintjob so far, very well done!
Biel-tan is not the easiest of Craftworld themes to paint, as white can really be a pain.
Even though I like to paint darker, more muted color themes on Eldar, it's great to see the "official" scheme for aspects done well.
Also read your story and boy did it bring back some memories!
I can remember borrowing some white dwarf - magazines from a library when I was ~12 years old. Browsing them on the floor and dreamt of buying all the cool models "someday when I'm old enough and have some money in my pockets".
Thanks both, I'm glad you like them!
For the white I've grown really fond of Army Painter Gorgon Hide. I love the shade, and it goes on better than a lot of their other colours. Just off-white on the cooler/blue side, and lets me highlight up to a pure white if I want to. For the Aspects, I generally plan on having a squad of each in the "official" studio scheme - or close to it - and then for other squads paint alternative shrines - either ones that have been shown officially or ones of my own devising using the normal colour palette of that Aspect. In fact, my favourite look for Fire Dragons is a deep red body, dark red or black helmet and gold fusion gun. That's another thing that stemmed from that old White Dwarf. It's amazing to think back to not having this wealth of online information at my fingertips to a time when all of my 40k knowledge came from one issue of one magazine.
So, I'm going to be busy for a while and probably won't get much of a chance for painting, but I had some seers ready to photograph so I thought it would be a shame not to post those now. Like I said in the first post, I think Eldar seers look great in green so despite not being the most seer-heavy Craftworld, I'm going to paint a lot of them.
First off, three Warlocks. One you've already seen, but I thought it would be a shame not to photograph the three finished Warlocks together.
Next, the Bonesinger that I picked up in the Made to Order run a year ago.
Onto the Farseers. Three of these - the current plastic one, and two metals. One I picked up from eBay and one from the Made to Order run.
All the Farseers.
And finally, a family shot of Seers!
Just the War Walker to go now before that batch of nearly-finished models I mentioned are done. I've also laid down some basecoats on 10 Warp Spiders. But like I said, I'm going to be busy and probably won't get much chance to continue for a while.
I am envious of how quickly you seem to be able to turn out clean, crisply painted models with lots of layers of paint. It takes me forever to do something even nearly as good.
I like that one of the seers has a black robe to distinguish him and make him look more important.
Thanks again everyone. The green was fairly time consuming but I love how it came out. There's a lot of layering gone into it. Starting with VMC Luftwaffe Camo Green, then layering up through VMC Medium Olive, Olive Green and Lime Green (with a few mixes in between), then the whole thing glazed with Citadel Waywatcher Green to add a bit of richness and blend it together a bit better.
Fifty wrote: I am envious of how quickly you seem to be able to turn out clean, crisply painted models with lots of layers of paint. It takes me forever to do something even nearly as good.
Please don't be tricked into thinking I've painted all of these over the course of the last few weeks, some of them have been WIP for months! Everything I'd posted so far I'd gradually got to a 'nearly finished' state where I was just waiting to hit them with a varnish, then finish off the metallics and spiritstones, but it was ages before I actually got the varnish out. I was actually waiting until I upgraded my spraying stick - I had been spraying models by blu-tacking them onto a piece of pine stripwood, but I all my models have magnets under the bases so that I can transport them in a steel toolbox. I realised that if I bought some steel flat bar that I could take advantage of the magnets and dispense with the blu-tac when spraying. The steel I bought was thin and floppy, so I ended up cable tying it to the pine...
Like so!
What I've been doing over the last few weeks I've been posting this thread is gradually finishing off all of those models that I had a headstart on. The only one that's left now is a War Walker, so once I've done that it's back to painting things up from scratch and I'm sure the pace will slow.
Fifty wrote: I like that one of the seers has a black robe to distinguish him and make him look more important.
One of the things that I wanted to do with the Farseers was use some slightly different colours from one to the next since they're all individual important characters and I wanted them all to have some differences, but tying them all together with prominent use of the Biel-Tan colours and making all of the Ghosthelms white with a black faceplate. So one of them ended up with the black robe and green cloak, the others ended up with red and black cloaks etc. I shall have to see what colours I end up picking for the others - because I've just about every metal farseer that ever saw a wide release sitting in the painting queue! Those models in the photo are maybe a third of my total seer council... yeah okay, I admit I have a psyker problem.
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Today's project has been creating a better base for my Scorpion super-heavy grav tank. If you're not familiar with the Forgeworld kit, it comes with one of the regular clear plastic flying bases just like the regular grav tanks, and a little lump of resin to go between the base and the tank. It's... unsatisfactory to say the least.
I'd already replaced the flying stands for my as-yet unpainted Falcons and Wave Serpents by taking a regular 60mm base and sticking a bolt up through it, then fixing some nuts inside the tank. So rather than riding on that flimsy plastic stick, my tanks literally screw down onto a steel bolt. I posted a thread on it a while back. They look like this -
For the Scorpion I wanted a bigger base, more like Knight size, with a taller bolt so it could sit higher, and I wanted the whole thing to be sturdy and basically everything that the base you get with the actual kit isn't. And I have access to a 100W laser cutter. So I grabbed some 6mm and some 2mm MDF, drew up some files, and this is the result:
I think on the whole a much more suitable base for the size of this thing, and much sturdier. The scary part will be when I actually drill into the Scorpion to fit the nuts!
The bolt/nut thing is a really great idea, and I might stand on your shoulders and use it in the future. Is the bolt meant to be that long? When you stated you want the Scorpion to sit higher than the standard clear base allows I thought you meant just a little higher. But, are you going for "soaring through the air" high? Do Scorpions do that? I enjoy Eldar, but I don't know much about the Forge World options.
I very much like the nut and bolt method. Overkill for most models, but I'd rather do that than leave them on that little plastic stick.
CaptainWaffle wrote: The bolt/nut thing is a really great idea, and I might stand on your shoulders and use it in the future. Is the bolt meant to be that long? When you stated you want the Scorpion to sit higher than the standard clear base allows I thought you meant just a little higher. But, are you going for "soaring through the air" high? Do Scorpions do that? I enjoy Eldar, but I don't know much about the Forge World options.
I was more thinking about looking good rather than the practicalities of a gaming piece. There's a Mymaera Scorpion in the Warhammer World exhibition hall that sits really high off its base, and I thought it looked great. I've got a photo around here somewhere, I'll spoiler tag it since it's not mine...
Spoiler:
Fluff wise grav tanks can fly higher than just hovering above the ground, and there's a strategem in the Codex called 'Cloudstrike' which lets you deepstrike vehicles, explaining that they're sometimes deployed in the lower atmosphere rather than ground level, so you descend onto the battlefield to deep strike.
Anyway, I deliberately cut three bases when I had the laser running, because it didn't take that much longer and I wanted some options. First, to know that if I feth up gluing one together and sanding it for a nice edge, I'll have some spares. But I also thought that I could do a high-off-the-base one and also one at the same sort of height as the rest of my grav tanks. Having three bases also means I can be prepared for if I end up buying a Cobra at some point... heh.
The nut and bolt method is a great thing to do for a model of that size. I've never seen the build of a scorpion so I'm really interested to see how it goes!
theCrowe wrote:What I want to know is Who are these guys? Does your Biel-Tan force have any backstory? That's what really makes them come alive.
I don't really have a backstory for them, unfortunately. I guess the story is much more the real-life love of Biel-Tan that I've carried over the decades but for various reasons never actually having a collection of them until now. I'm just loving painting all the different models at the moment.
Tyranid Horde wrote:The nut and bolt method is a great thing to do for a model of that size. I've never seen the build of a scorpion so I'm really interested to see how it goes!
I'm terrified of ruining a £160 hunk of resin when I start drilling into it! Probably won't be many updates on it for a while, I'm juggling different bits of projects. I had a long weekend with a lot of hobby progress, including assembling a Guardian squad and a Wave Serpent, working on painting my first squad of Warp Spiders and priming two Wave Serpents and a Falcon. The Scorpion is still waiting, and I still haven't finished off that War Walker...
Grav tanks are just that bit more fun to paint than War Walkers, it's why I've still not gotten past the first highlight on my squadron.
Indeed, I've had these in the queue for a while, just not got around to any yet. As it stands the motor pool is two Wave Serpents, two Falcons and the Scorpion, but I can see many more grav tanks in my future if I'm not careful. I mean I already have enough infantry to justify quite a lot more transports, and I don't even have a singe Fire Prism yet. Then the Night Spinner, which I seem to recall reading somewhere (that I can't quite find now) is popular on Biel-Tan, which would make sense since they're supposed to be the only craftworld to operate the super heavy Void Spinner variant.
For a change from my normal scheduled wait-until-it's-finished-to-post-it method, I feel like I ought to add a new picture here, so here's a shot of my messy workbench at the moment -
Man that bench is a beautiful sight. I dream of a bench of a bench like that! My man-cave was banished by the realities of fatherhood many moons ago and I mostly work out of a couple of small IKEA baskets on a shelf like some sort of refugee hobbyist in exile.
Only an Eldar player would call that messy - you should see my proppa greenskin messy worktable . looks like a nice diverse set of models - I always liked the background of the warpspiders, curious to see how they'll turn out painted.
Thanks all! I find the varying reactions to the bench somewhat amusing. I'm not the tidiest person so while I might occasionally have a major tidy-up, within a few painting sessions it'll be back to looking like that again so I tend to leave it like that. Just this year I moved out of a small rented flat where I had to literally shove my computer mouse and keyboard out of the way on my PC desk to have a tiny amount of space to hobby in - and bought a house where I now have a dedicated man-cave with two huge office desks - one totally dedicated to hobby. I'm still enjoying the fact that I can spread out and not need to clear everything away again at the end of a session.
CaptainWaffle wrote: Which specific paints do you use for your Biel-Tan? Or have you posted that before and I missed it?
I think I mentioned paint ranges but I haven't mentioned specific shades before.
Green: These can vary a bit depending on what I'm painting. If it's something where I want a darker green such as the folds in seer robes or the middle of vehicle panels (I like Biel-Tan vehicles in a darker green when compared to the shade used for things like Guardian helmets) I start with VMC Luftwaffe Camo Green. Highlight/layer up through VMC Medium Olive, VMC Olive Green and then a final fine highlight of VMC Lime Green. If I want to go really in depth I'll do a few mixes as intermediate steps, particularly a 50:50 between the Luftwaffe Camo Green and the Medium Olive since there's a fair difference between those two, similarly between Olive and Lime. Army Painter Green Tone wash on standby if the model calls for it. Then an all-over glaze of Citadel Waywatcher Green to bring a bit of richness to the colour and blend the layers a bit better.
For things like Guardian helmets where I'm looking for a lighter shade and not as much depth, I'll start with VMC Medium Olive, highlight with Olive Green or Lime Green, wash with AP Green Tone if needed and glaze with Waywatcher.
White: Much simpler! It's Army Painter Gorgon Hide, which although a lot of Army Painter's range leaves a lot to be desired I really like that shade and it goes on fairly well for a really light colour. It's carefully lined (often a few rounds of back and forth to tidy it up to an extent I'm happy with) using VMC German Grey. I often don't bother with a highlight on the whites, but if I do it's VGC Dead White. If I'm painting cloth I'll use VMC Pale Grey Blue in the recesses for a bit of depth - I often use that as an intermediate stage anyway because it covers well and I usually work from grey auto primer.
Blacks: VMC German Grey, AP Dark Tone wash, AP Uniform Grey highlight. If it's a cloak or something I'll work in several different shades of grey for layer highlights.
Metallics: I've generally gone for a dark gold sort of look. Really simple - VMC Bronze with an AP Strong Tone wash. Where I've wanted them lighter I've usually picked VMC Gold instead of the Bronze.
Spiritstones: I do these in a gradient of metallics and then use the Citadel Spiritstone paints.
Basing: Rims in Army Painter Monster Brown. Texture paint is AK Interactive Light Earth, with some patches in AK Interactive Light and Dry Crackle Effects. Those textures have a slightly lighter shade than I want, so I give them an all-over wash from a massive pot of VGC Sepia Wash. Then I've got a selection of tufts that I picked up from ebay - generally a mix of light green, dry and dead grass/scrub/bushes. I'm going for a sort of arid steppe kind of look.
I won't go into all the individual Aspect shrines - unless you want to know?
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Sorry for the lack of updates. I take a long time over painting and generally started this blog off by only showing finished pieces. But I suppose some WIPs can't hurt. Posting here helps motivate me to keep going so thanks for all the feedback folks, I appreciate it.
So, I've said often enough that I have a War Walker in progress and nearly finished. It's still nearly finished. It literally just needs the basing finishing, the eye lenses doing on the pilot and the canopy gluing on. Yet I've been working on other things! I really need to get that one sorted. The Warp Spiders you can see in that shot of my workbench - I've been working on them the past couple of weeks and they're also nearly done. Just spiritstones, patterns on the warp jump generators and basing to go. I've got the basecoats down on three windriders. And finally - I've been putting a lot of work into that Wave Serpent that you could see in the last shot.
I've been following that green recipe that I listed above. Like I said, I like Biel-Tan vehicles with dark green panels and fairly bright highlights. So all the panels are Luftwaffe Camo green at their centre, then gradually edge highlighted up through 4 separate layers, starting off with a really thick highlight of 50:50 Luftwaffe to Medium Olive, then through progressively thinner Medium Olive, Olive and finally a thin Lime Green. Green Tone Wash, Waywatcher Glaze, and a couple of coats of VMC Matt Medium because it had picked up a bit of a shine from somewhere that I still haven't completely killed off. It's currently looking like this:
The lighting for the photo perhaps makes it look a bit brighter than it really is - in person the panels look darker. Anyway I'm really pleased with how it's coming along even if I have made loads of work for myself with the sheer number of layers of highlight. Still got plenty of things to do before it's finished - the weapons are behind the rest of the tank so I need to sort those. The canopy, metallics and any spiritstones need doing. Plus my first attempt at Biel-Tan thorn patterns and getting the Biel-Tan rune onto it. I'm not sure whether I'll freehand another one - I enjoyed doing it on that Dire Avenger banner - or use one of the decals. The worst thing after spending all this time on getting the green right is the thought that I could ruin it by messing up my attempts at thorn patterns or runes!
Then once this one is done, I've got to go through the whole process again on another Wave Serpent, two Falcons and a Scorpion...
That's an excellent thorough explanation of how you do green and I may end up robbing the methodology for my own craftworld's helmets. Citadel's lighter greens have really poor coverage so maybe I ought to make the switch to Vallejo.
Your wave serpent looks gorgeous, I wish I had the patience to do that much layering on my own tanks! Are you planning on doing the thorny vines like you see on Biel Tan studio armies?
Thanks all. I'm really pleased with how it's turning out. It's taken ages, but it's what I had in my head before I started so I'm really happy about that. It wasn't especially difficult either - the panels on the tank are a lot easier and less fiddly to edge highlight than the troops
- it just took a while.
Tyranid Horde wrote: That's an excellent thorough explanation of how you do green and I may end up robbing the methodology for my own craftworld's helmets. Citadel's lighter greens have really poor coverage so maybe I ought to make the switch to Vallejo.
Your wave serpent looks gorgeous, I wish I had the patience to do that much layering on my own tanks! Are you planning on doing the thorny vines like you see on Biel Tan studio armies?
Yeah I'm going to have a go at the vines. The only thing that worries me slightly is if I make a mistake or don't like how it looks, after spending so long getting the green right I don't want to ruin it. So I reckon I'll hold off on the wave serpent for now. I'm also painting 3 Windriders and I've got them to the stage of having finished the basecoats. I'll get their green finished and then try the vines on the jetbikes first since they'll be less time-consuming to repaint the green if I mess up the thorns. Hopefully that should make me happier about doing it to the Wave Serpent.
The VMC Greens are really nice and cover well, and the ones I've picked make for a good natural gradient from dark to light. I think they're not as rich as I would like (presumably that's great for real world military modellers though), which is why I add the glaze as the final layer just to add that bit of extra saturation to the colour. I've fallen in love with the VMC range in general really. When I got back into the hobby a couple of years ago, all my old Citadel paints had dried out. I bought myself an Army Painter Mega Paint Set because it was cheap (like £60 for about 50 paints), and just used that for a while. It was inconsistent, some of the paints were good but others were pretty useless. Picked up some Vallejo and now Model Color has become my go-to range.
I almost wish I was happy doing faster paintjobs on my Eldar but I wouldn't be happy with the end result knowing that I could have done them better. Which means that my collection will take forever to paint - I've got a big enough queue as it stands and I've just pre-ordered 3 copies of the new Battleforce. I know a lot of folks found the Battleforce really disappointing through some combination of being old models they've seen so many times before and having non-competitive stuff. But from my perspective I'll take all the Dire Avengers I can get - I feel that Biel-Tan should be built around Dire Avengers but simultaneously the price of a 5-elf DA box annoys me. I don't have any Vypers yet, and a squadron of 3 seems like a good number. I've got 6 windriders, but I'll welcome 9 more - especially if I convert some to Shining Spears (just need to decide on a conversion I'm happy with). Wraithknights, I wasn't a massive fan of until recently, but staring at the model on the GW site when I knew it was going into the Battleforce and it really grew on me. I think I could do some cool things with them, and 3 seems a suitably excessive number (next stop, Titans!). I'll take more guardians - I've got 20 already so 30 more gives me the option for two big Guardian bombs if I wanted it. And the Farseer - of course I've already got that model once, but I'm weirdly excited to see what sort of kitbashes I can do with it to make some unique farseers. It's like having just about every metal seer model isn't enough and I need to concoct my own. I'm picturing mix-and-match between the infantry farseer, the new Spiritseer, Eldrad and the jetbike farseer, with extra bits like shuriken pistols from the Harlequin troupe and potentially diving into my old High Elf bits box.
Finally, in another attempt to get around my irritation at the price of Dire Avengers, I managed to find 5 sets of legs-and-tabard on one of the bits sites for a good price. Given that the Exarch has a separate torso, head, weapon options and separate things to stick on his back, the only thing you need is another set of legs to make 5 regular DAs and 1 exarch from each 5-man set. I had 10 already, 15 coming with the battleforces, so with the 5 extra sets of legs I'll be able to make 5 more DA's. It's the little wins that make me smile.
Beautiful blog, in terms of minis and in history. You've got some nice clean lines going here and the green on the vehicles/robes/wraithguard looks gorgeous.
It's crazy to think how old some of these minis are, like the metal Warp Spiders, and - despite the lack of poses - just how well they hold up to the new plastics.
For your DAs, it might be worth it to keep an eye out for DA heads on ebay/bits websites, and whack them on regular guardians. You can buy the individual heads for €1.25 each here: https://megabitzshop.com/navi.php?qs=dire+avengers+head (I am Aussie and not affiliated with this site in anyway - it just popped up in google!)
I know the DA bodies have a few more extras than guardians, but if you can whack 2-3 of those in each squad you're laughing!
The Empire Wizard kit might also have some useful bits to make warlocks/farseers...
That's some dedication to the green - really worth it IMO though. And good find on the bitz, I tend to do the same with my ridiculously oversized bits box
Thanks both. On the bits front, I suppose I find it a bit amusing that I go to such lengths to eke out the contents of the Dire Avengers box - yet I've got such a pile of unfinished stuff that will take me ages to get through with the rate I paint. Like today - I've finally got around to doing the last few touches on that War Walker. That's the last model out of the Start Collecting box I picked up over a year ago. If it took me that long to get one start collecting finished, I dread to think how long it will take me to get through 3 Bladehost Battleforces. Never mind, and keep painting I guess!
I'm not sure I'm totally happy with the walker, while simultaneously being unsure exactly what it is that I'm unsure about. Never mind, it'll do. This is also the first showing on this blog of how I decided to do the vehicle canopies. I didn't want to just leave them clear, but I also haven't picked up an airbrush yet and I didn't want to try a gradient by hand painting. So instead I've just glazed the inside surface with VMC transparent blue. I can go back and paint the outside later if I feel like it.
I've also got those Warp Spiders and 3 Windriders nearly finished, so hopefully it won't be long before they appear up here. The Wave Serpent isn't all that far off either, and I'm halfway through layering up the green on a Falcon.
Anyway, I seem to recall a few posts back promising an army shot once I had the War Walker done, so here goes, taken on a tabletop that sort of matches my bases:
I'm rather pleased with how they look when they come together.
youwashock wrote: Magnificent, man. Nothing like the army shot to get that feeling of accomplishment.
Cheers. It does feel great seeing them all together, though the fact that I can so easily fit them all into a photo reminds me just how much I still have to paint.
Some more progress today, I've declared the first 3 Windriders finished. I've painted these with my same green recipe that I've used on that WIP Wave Serpent further up the page. I wanted to get these finished first as a bit of a testbed for the Biel-Tan thorn patterns. I think they've come out pretty well so I'll use them on the other vehicles. I also tried various different of the Biel-Tan rune decals. I think maybe the big one looks a little too big, and I may feel the need to add a grey outline to the black one. But on the whole I'm pretty pleased and I'll leave them as they are for now. They're loaded with shuriken cannons at the minute, but they're magnetised so I've got the other options handy too. For bases I've used the standard 32mm bases rather than the clear plastic flying bases. I was never keen on the fact that flying bases were different in style to normal bases, I'd already adopted 60mm standard bases for my grav tanks to fit the nut-and-bolt mounting method, the 32mm bases are virtually the same size as the small flying bases and they allow me to fit magnets underneath for transport in my steel toolbox. So a no-brainer really.
Tyranid Horde wrote: The nut and bolt method is a great thing to do for a model of that size. I've never seen the build of a scorpion so I'm really interested to see how it goes!
Ask and ye shall receive. I've built it this afternoon.
All the parts laid out:
So, the underside has a convex dome-shaped spot which is meant to take that dome shaped bit of resin that you can see under the pulsars in the first pic. That's the way it's designed to stand off the base. Obviously I wasn't using that. I was planning on using several nuts for stability and drilling a bit further in to the body, but some quick fiddling told me that trying to use multiple nuts resulted in the alignment between them not being perfect and causing the bolt to get stuck. So one nut it was. I was kind of relieved because that meant I wouldn't need to do any more drilling. I grabbed a penny washer and superglued the nut to the inside. The washer wasn't quite big enough to go on the outsides of the opening, so I glued it to a slightly larger washer and then packed out the opening with milliput - if the superglue were to fail on the nut it could come off and rattle around in there which would be somewhat of a disaster. This way it's firmly held in place once the millput cures.
Gluing the engines on:
I decided that I was going to pin the pulsars with some 2mm steel rod. Good thing I've got a set of bolt cutters (my biggest hobby tool!) to cut them down to size. Some very careful drilling with my power drill -
What you haven't seen is the 5mm magnet I've stuck on the peg on the bottom of the turret, and another in the hole on top of the body. I had to chop down the turret peg a bit to make room for the magnets, but now the turret firmly stays on the tank even if it's tipped upside down. Everything glued together and the turret magnetised on:
Final thing left to do was the heavy weapon mount on top of the turret. It uses the Wave Serpent style heavy weapons, but it doesn't stick a peg through the hole, I think you're just supposed to glue one in there. I wanted to keep them swappable, so I drilled through one side of the mount to let me use another short bit of 2mm steel rod to slide in and through the hole in the side of the weapon. Leaving just enough steel showing to pull it out with a pair of pliers if I want to change the gun.
And the end result is a complete Scorpion. Welcome to the painting queue! Part of me wants to get on and paint it because it's such a cool model, but I'm also tempted to paint a few more 'regular' things first. I basically never play but I feel like I should concentrate on getting the models that would be more useful for a normal game done. On the other hand...
One more thing on the modelling front is that I feel I may want to bend the pulsars a little bit more. I managed to get them close to being level and equal, but one is ever so slightly higher than the other. Hopefully my substantial pins will stop them from coming off the turret in the process.
First of all, I have to say that's a gorgeous army you've got there. The greens mesh together so well and and the bases make the whole thing pop. Definitely jealous!
Liking the War Walker, interesting use of the glaze to colour the canopy, it's quite a cool effect.
The thorns on your jetbikes look great and the transfers went on really well by the looks. All of my jetbikes are the old kind and even though the new ones have been out for years they still look new to me.
That scorpion is such an impressive lump of resin, I didn't think the top and bottom were one piece, which in all honesty is a bit of a godsend! In regards to whether you'll paint that first, it's totally up to you, but you'll be at it a very long time looking at the way you paint tanks (albeit worth every second)!
Tyranid Horde wrote: First of all, I have to say that's a gorgeous army you've got there. The greens mesh together so well and and the bases make the whole thing pop. Definitely jealous!
Liking the War Walker, interesting use of the glaze to colour the canopy, it's quite a cool effect.
The thorns on your jetbikes look great and the transfers went on really well by the looks. All of my jetbikes are the old kind and even though the new ones have been out for years they still look new to me.
That scorpion is such an impressive lump of resin, I didn't think the top and bottom were one piece, which in all honesty is a bit of a godsend! In regards to whether you'll paint that first, it's totally up to you, but you'll be at it a very long time looking at the way you paint tanks (albeit worth every second)!
Thanks sir. I'm very pleased with them, it's just taking a long time. One of my mates is plotting not buying a single model in 2019 and working on his pile - I'm starting to think I should do the same, though realistically I'd never make it through the year.
I was quite surprised (and relieved) when the body turned out to be one giant lump of resin. It's certainly got a fair bit of weight to it. I was afraid that I would have to stick the body together, and having to bend the parts into shape first so that they lined up, but one piece meant that wasn't a problem. The only real bendy resin problems in the kit were the pulsars and the little aerial thing that goes below the cockpit. Mainly the pulsars, because they need to match for it to look good. Like I said, I'm still not quite happy but they're pretty close. A minor bend should sort it.
As for the next models, I've been putting some finishing touches to the Warp Spiders tonight - should get them photographed tomorrow probably. I've got a production line of grav tanks going (one Wave Serpent nearly done, one Falcon with the green just about finished, another Wave Serpent with basecoats only) and I just started putting down the basecoats on another group of 10 guardians. I think I'll look to start some Fire Dragons and Striking Scorpions soon as well. That lot ought to keep me busy painting well over the Christmas period.
Thanks all. I really appreciate the comments, it helps to keep me motivated to keep up the rate of painting.
Flinty wrote: I still maintain that the Scorpion is the best tank that FW have ever done Both in its own right, and I how it copies the aesthetic of the Falcon.
Looking good and looking forward to it I all its greeny glory
I totally agree there - I love the thing. I wasn't necessarily planning on getting one, but I was wandering around the Forge World shop at Warhammer World and noticed that they had one on the shelves. I tried to resist, but after sitting in Bugman's for a while I had to go back and get it. It's really a lovely model and I'm looking forward to painting it. It may be a little while before it gets to the top of the painting queue though.
Ezki wrote: Woah!
Looking better and better by every model you paint. Liked the army shot.
The Wave Serpent and the War Walkers look astonishing!
You really pulled it off with those thorns, keep it up.
Can't wait to see the Scoepion painted.
Thanks very much! I'm very pleased with how the green came out. One of those recipes where after getting a feel for the individual colours I just thought that they would work well layering up to the lime green with a wash and a glaze, and it came out if anything better than I'd imagined.
Good progress. The work on the Jet Bikes is beautiful with the vine pattern.
Army shot has be exalted!
Always like to see larger model builds with magnets shown with photos in case I ever want to reference a build that was successful.
Cheers,
CB
Thanks Captain! There aren't actually that many magnets in it, just on the bottom of the peg that mounts the turret and the matching magnet in the tank body (just to hold the turret more firmly onrto the tank than gravity alone) and similarly under the heavy weapon mount at the back of the turret (again to hold it on more firmly while keeping it rotatable). Both of those cases the peg was about the same depth as the hole so I needed to cut the pegs down a little bit to make space for the magnets.
The only other modifications are the ones I showed, with the 2mm steel rod pins in the pulsars and the little bit of 2mm steel rod I used in the heavy weapon mount to make it swappable.
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Today I've got the promised photos of the Warp Spiders. It was about time that this blog called 'Power Metal' got a bit more actual metal in it - and substantial metal too. There's enough mass in a metal warp spider that each one has two 5mm magnets under the base to hold them steady in my steel toolbox for transport.
They're painted rather similarly to the studio standard scheme. Much like the Hawks, Banshees and Avengers I've set out to do my first batch similar to the studio scheme, and may well mix it up a bit for subsequent ones. For the Hawks, Banshees and Spiders I've got another squad of each primed and ready to paint (I really have spent too much time and money on ebay), but I won't do any of those until I've painted at least one squad of Fire Dragons and Striking Scorpions, maybe my Dark Reapers too.
Anyway, the photos:
And for the back, one of the last things I did was paint on the web designs:
Since these guys are mostly red, I switched to the green spiritstone paint rather than the red I normally use.
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So, what's in the queue right now?
In Progress
- 2 Wave Serpents and a Falcon - at various stages of completeness. The first Wave Serpent is down to just needing the small details, thorns and decals doing. The Falcon isn't far behind, the green is finished, the white isn't lined with grey yet. The second Wave Serpent is basecoated on the green and white. I'd like to get these done - the army shot up above is somewhat lacking in larger models and vehicles with just the Wraithlord and War Walker finished so far.
- 10 Guardians & weapon platform - slowly building up the white coat by coat. That would take me to 20 painted. I fancied getting a few more troops done, and gives enough for a full 20-model guardian bomb. Coupled with the fact that I've got 30 more on the sprue I figured throwing a squad of guardians into the queue every now and then would be a good idea.
Next on the List?
The list is always flexible, but I'd like to get a squad of Fire Dragons and a squad of Striking Scorpions done. They're the only aspects for which I have enough models for more than one squad where I haven't painted a single squad yet, and they're also Aspects that I've always been quite fond of. For these I might deviate from my pattern of doing the first squad of an Aspect close to the studio scheme.
The Fire Dragons in particular were always my favourites. I think I've said before that the old White Dwarf that introduced me to so much eldar stuff had the Fire Dragons painted in a deep red body, with a really dark red/black helmet and gold fusion gun, and so to me that's always been the 'proper' Fire Dragon scheme even though most of the studio models have always been orange/yellow. So I reckon I'll do my own version of that. I've got enough Fire Dragons to do 3 squads, so I'll probably make one of the subsequent squads in the orange/yellow when I get around to it. For the Striking Scorpions I'm not a massive fan of the bright yellow details that the studio scheme uses. I'm tempted to do one squad using a brighter green and a deep ochre, and the other squad in a really drab army green sort of scheme to reflect the fact that bright colours aren't really the best idea for ambush tactics. I'm still a bit undecided which to do first.
Both the Fire Dragons and Striking Scorpions are a bit different to the Hawks/Banshees/Warp Spiders in that I don't have the exact number of models to make exact nice 10-model squads. Pretty much, I have more Exarchs than 1-in-10 models. For the Fire Dragons I have 2 Firepike Exarchs and 1 Flamer, to 21 regular FDs. I think I may make them into a squad of 10, one of 8 and one of 6 (or maybe 10/7/7). In practice if I used them in a game they'd probably only be 5 or 6 model squads anyway, it will let me do 3 different colour scheme variations and I'd like to do at least one full squad of 10 for modelling/painting reasons. For the Striking Scorpions I have 2 Scorpion's Claw Exarchs and 1 Biting Blade, with 18 regulars. What I'm thinking of doing there is making one 10-model squad with a Scorpion's Claw Exarch, and then for the others painting the remaining 9 regulars and 2 Exarchs all in the same scheme so that it can be one 10-model squad if I leave out an Exarch, or it can be 2 MSU squads.
You can probably tell I've thought too much about this.
After those, the plan gets a bit more vague. I rather enjoyed those 3 Windriders, so I might be tempted to build and paint some more fairly soon, maybe some more Dire Avengers, a Wraithknight, or finally get around to painting the Scorpion or the Avatar!
Thanks again for the responses folks, I'm glad you like the spiders. I was really pleased with how they came out.
I've been a bit quiet recently, mainly because I went to visit my parents over Christmas and New Year. I took my painting gear with me, but when I have to take over the kitchen table to have a painting session rather than just sitting at my hobby desk at home, I didn't get much done.
However I've just had a session on my batch of grav tanks and I thought it was worth a post to show that I'm still making some progress. Before tonight I'd got them all to the point where the green was fully layered up and finished, and the white also done. Tonight I've done the thorns on the first Wave Serpent and also applied a couple of decals. Studio Biel-Tank grav tanks usually have a white rectangle next to the cockpit with some fancy variation of the Biel-Tan rune. I wanted to emulate that so I painted on a white rectangle, cheated a bit by using one of the decals which have the rune in black, and then embellished it somewhat. I think it came out quite well. The only thing I'm not really sure about at this point is the blue glazed cockpit. It looked really good when I was doing it, but putting it on the tank I'm not sure whether the colour draws too much attention and whether I might have been better off going with a black/smoked look.
All I've really got left to do on the Wave Serpent is decide whether I want to pick out any of the bumps as gemstones. I'm normally quite sparing with the number of gemstones I like to do since I think that too many can make the model too busy, but I feel like I should at least do a couple.
Anyway, the photos. So, the centre Wave Serpent is the nearly finished one, the Falcon and the other Wave Serpent are just a bit behind, needing the thorns and decals (and the canopies and weapons putting on).
Hey mate, green looking beautiful as always. I'm actually a fan of the blue canopy as well, it's a nice focal point that draws the eye and then lets it run over the nearby details - I think it enhances the paintjob rather than distracting from it. Love the vines on the serpent too!
I like the canopy, too. The color stands out, but not so much that it competes with the green. I think when they are all done in a similar fashion it is going to look really good.
Thanks both. I think the longer I looked at the photos and the actual physical models, the more I felt that the blue canopy was OK, so I think I'll leave them like that. Time for a painting session!
Great to see the progress on your trio of wave serpents, they're looking really good. I also have to say the blue canopies are growing on me the more I look at them, as tzurk said, it draws the eye well.
Tyranid Horde wrote: Great to see the progress on your trio of wave serpents, they're looking really good. I also have to say the blue canopies are growing on me the more I look at them, as tzurk said, it draws the eye well.
Keep at it!
Thanks sir! I shall.
I bought new models. I'd been thinking of ordering a couple of Start Collecting Craftworlds sets online in an FLGS's new year sale, but I decided against it through the idea that it would leave me with an absurd amount of unpainted plastic and that it wouldn't be that much more expensive to wait and buy them when I actually needed them. Then I heard about the upcoming price rise so yesterday I went off down to my local FLGS to pick up a couple of boxes. I particularly wanted them for the Wraithlords and War Walkers - I feel like those work quite nicely in threes. Not necessarily in game, just in a collection, and until yesterday I had one of each. Plus I felt that I needed more Wraithlords given that I've now got three Wraithknights from three copies of the Christmas Battleforce, and that I should at least have as many of the smaller wraith construct as I did of the bigger. These are the convoluted justifications that go through my mind for buying more models. It also takes my Wraithguard/blades count up to 20 - enough to do one squad of each type.
So that's brought me up to an absolutely ridiculous quantitiy of miniatures to work on, to the extent that the pile seems overwhelming. I'll work through it gradually! Given the quantity of sprues I have sitting around, the last few days I've been doing a lot of assembly. Somehow it seems better to at least get things assembled even if it will be months before I paint them. I've built a Crimson Hunter Exarch, 3 Windriders and a squad of 10 Dire Avengers. I actually picked up another box of DA's yesterday, as if having 20 to build wasn't enough. The issue was that I wanted to build two squads of 10 - one with a Diresword Exarch, and one with Glaive/Shield - and paint them in different schemes so it's not like I could make them interchangeable. The issue was that after buying those 5 sets of legs as bitz, out of the 20 DA's I could build, 3 needed to be Exarchs. So I figured if I bought another box then I'd be able to do those two squads of 10, and one more MSU squad. These plans just seem to multiply, and it's a lot quicker to think them up than it is to carry them out!
Anyway, I built the squad of 10 with the Diresword Exarch today. I think I'll do these in a scheme with traditional blue body, a red helmet and white faceplate, somewhat inspired by Asurmen and by one of the alternative schemes in the 2nd Ed Codex. At the miniute I'm thinking when I get around to Glaive/shield squad I'll do them closer to the box art, and the other MSU squad with dark blue armour and black helms.
I've also done a bit of work on my second batch of 10 Guardians, bringing the white up to scratch. I'm jumping around a bit between the 3 Grav Tanks, the 10 Guardians and assmebly at the minute.
New models multiply at an alarming rate sometimes. I do my best not to think about it as things left undone but more as potential for the future. It works most of the time.
Indeed. This collection has swelled at an alarming rate – partly metal Aspect Warriors that I’ve grabbed from ebay when they turned up at the right price (got to get them when you can, right?), and then more recently things like the Christmas battleforces with FLGS pre-order discount. Suddenly before I knew it my Craftworlds collection is literally 10k points, possibly depending on how I equip things or kitbash one kit into another. And as you can see from this blog - which features all of the completed models to date - only a small fraction of it is finished.
Talking of Christmas battleforces, I started building a Wraithknight. Fully planned on magnetising it like I tend to with all of my vehicles, but I couldn’t decide how I was going to do it so I’ve gathered a pile of cut and cleaned pieces with very little gluing. The problem is that although I can see how it would be simple enough to magnetise, I feel it would be quite a lot more time consuming to fully magnetise it to a ‘perfect’ state that I’m happy with. I’ve seen a lot of magnetised models where it’s pretty obvious where the magnets are or when some aspect of the pose is sacrificed for modularity. I’m very particular – I like my magnetised models to be totally incognito, where you wouldn’t realise it was magnetised until you pull one of the bits off.
Like for example, some of the folks who magnetise WKs, when they’re making the right arm gun swappable between the HWC and the Suncannon will only make the main barrel swappable, and will glue the HWC bits all over the rest of the gun housing (so that it matches the other one) and who cares if the ancillary bits and pieces aren’t right when they use the Suncannon? Me, that’s who. I care.
So, I was scratching my head trying to figure out how I was going to do a perfect, hidden magnet job and started to wonder whether to bother at all. That thought seems weird to me because it’s been a long time since I haven’t magnetised a big model and general wisdom is that it’s such an expensive model that you’re doing yourself a disservice by not magnetising. But because I bought three Christmas battleforces, I’ve got three of the things. So I could just build up one suncannon WK, one sword and board, one with dual HWCs.
And given that
a) I basically never play the game anyway and if/when I do play it would be a very casual game.
b) Any game small enough to care about the loadout I doubt I would ever want to field more than one WK (I’m still fundamentally Biel-Tan and want Aspect Warriors first and foremost), and if I’ve built all three types then I have all 3 options to choose from anyway
c) Any game big enough where I would want to field more than one is getting towards Apocalypse type stuff where it’s more about throwing the models on the table – and a trio with all the loadouts is a pretty cool group to put on the board.
d) I could probably pull off some cool poses more reliably if they were fixed rather than magnetised.
e) Building fixed loadouts instead of making the main arms/guns swappable would drastically cut down on the build and painting time, which would be nice considering the sheer number of models that I have in the queue.
I’m leaning towards not bothering with the magnets. Like I said, feels weird. Anybody want to tell me I’m being an idiot?
In either case I’ll probably put the cleaned bits into a box for now. If I’m building them with fixed loadouts/poses, I kinda want to build all three at the same time to concentrate on getting three different poses that suit the loadout and look good as a group, and I reckon that’s going to work better if I do them together. So I'll put those pieces aside until I feel like clipping and cleaning the next one - or until I change my mind and decide to go with magnets after all.
Bellerophon wrote: I like my magnetised models to be totally incognito, where you wouldn’t realise it was magnetised until you pull one of the bits off.
I totally agree. I'm not familiar with the Wraithknight Kit (currently working my way around the Imperial Knight kit) - but as much as I like to magnetise everything I agree with youwashock - your reasoning to not magnetise, for you, in these circumstances, is perfectly sound to me. General wisdom is just that - general - it should not be applied to all circumstances all of the time
Thanks folks. I guess the thought of not magnetising was so different to what I normally do I wondered whether I was thinking straight. Anyway, I've clipped and cleaned all the bits from one WK kit and put them away in a box for now. Like I said, I think I'd like to glue all 3 WKs together simultaneously so I can sort out the posing for each at the same time.
No photos today, because I've still been on my assembly mission. Grey plastic is grey plastic and mine will look much the same as anybody else's. The last week or so I've built a Crimson Hunter Exarch, 3 Windriders, 10 Dire Avengers, 5 Scytheguard, and stripped and assembled 10 metal Striking Scorpions. I think I'll put the glue aside for now and get some more painting done. Hopefully in the next week I'll be able to finish those grav tanks and guardians, and get some photos up.
The grav tanks look amazing already!
Seems you've been really busy building stuff. It's good to build a bunch at the same time so one can focus on one aspect of the hobby at a time.
Also quite a collection of space elves. Sometimes the amount of grey plastic just piles without even realising it.
Latest additions - finished those 3 grav tanks. They took a while, but I'm pleased with the results:
I also finished the next 10 Guardians. I decided to mix in a few more green and black faceplates with this group, vaguely based on the proportions of faceplate colours used in the guardian squad that was on the box art 20 years ago when these models were released.
What's next? Just started working on a squad of Fire Dragons.
One of the maxims amongst the old guard Napoleonic figure painters was "In mass lies perfection". By this they meant that one could paint a single figure to a decent tabletop standard, but once you multiplied that by dozens- or even hundreds- the assemblage took n a quality all its own.
Here, you have achieved both individual high standards and perfection 'en masse'. The Biel-tan colors, combined with individual vine patterns makes each tank special and part of the whole. I know that's the purpose of Craft World themes, but you've carried it off well, here.
Cheers all, I really appreciate the comments. It's reassuring me that all that time I spent on the green was worth it!
I can only imagine how long it's going to take to do the same thing on the Scorpion. Speaking of which, I've moved that one tiny step closer to painting by having another go at heating and then bending the pulsar barrels. They're not totally perfect but they're probably as close as I'm going to get them and most importantly they're level with one another. I still need to finish making the base before I prime and paint though.
I've made a bit more progress on the Fire Dragon squad this evening, but still at the stage of blocking out colours and putting down the first washes, so there's quite a lot yet to do on those.
Right, I've got the Fire Dragons done. After such a long period juggling painting 3 tanks, a guardian squad and also building various things, it's been nice to just concentrate on painting one squad and getting them finished in a relatively short space of time.
I've already made a fairly big deal of how big an influence WD236 was on me as a lad as my only source of information for quite a long time, and I've based the squad colour scheme on the Fire Dragons in that magazine. It's also the same scheme that's shown on the back of the 3rd Edition Codex and is also similar to the scheme they used for Fuegan (not only is his sculpt ancient, the paintjob they show on the webstore is almost as old as the model is!). For the longest time I thought that it was the 'official' scheme for Fire Dragons and had no idea that most of the time the studio painted them orange/yellow. It looked like this:
That's always been what I think a Fire Dragon ought to look like. So my squad looks like this:
I pretty much went for copying that old scheme, with the sash things in green for a little tie-in to the Biel-Tan colours. I'm quite pleased with how they came out, though I'm not sure whether I could have used a slightly brighter highlight on the helmets. As ever I think they look better IRL than they do in the photos, but that's probably a common problem that we all wrestle with. There's more depth to the shades/highlights than there appears to be in the photo, probably because of the lighting.
I've actually got enough Fire Dragons to make two more squads. I wanted this first squad to be 10 strong, not particularly for game reasons, just that I've been painting up 10-strong squads where I can, depending on the number of models I end up with after my ebay hauls. That leaves me with 2 more Exarchs (one firepike, one flamer) and 12 regulars to split between them, so I'm thinking either a squad of 8 and one of 6 (which fits in a Falcon), or two squads of 7 (which would fit in a wave serpent with a 5-man squad of something else to perfectly fill the 12-model capacity). Either way, I'm thinking one squad in a scheme closer to the studio's orange/yellow, and one squad in a really dark red with black helmets and really bright faceplates to contrast. Or alternatively, I've also seen some FD's with bone helmets that looked cool. I'll make my mind up when I get closer to painting them.
For now, I'm about to start on some Striking Scorpions. I'd like to get one squad of each type of Aspect Warrior painted - at least the ones that I have. I've also got some Dark Reapers to do, and a Crimson Hunter Exarch. The only Aspects I don't actually have are Shining Spears (don't want the old bikes and haven't got a conversion for the new jetbikes that I'm happy with yet) and Shadow Spectres (I want to buy the Exarch with the squad, and the Exarch seems to have been "temporarily" out of stock for about a year). I'd also like to get more Dire Avengers done soon.
An excellent recreation. Lovely looking squad. In my mind, it is hard to beat the original models (Jes is the man, and when you add nostalgia, well...), but that Exarch is a really cool figure.
youwashock wrote: An excellent recreation. Lovely looking squad. In my mind, it is hard to beat the original models (Jes is the man, and when you add nostalgia, well...), but that Exarch is a really cool figure.
Thanks again sir, I appeciate it. I love Jes' originals too, and I think principally the reason that the 'current' aspect sculpts appeal to me is because they're largely an update to his 2nd ed designs, keeping the same overall look.
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I've not updated this Blog for a couple of weeks, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been busy. I've just completed some Striking Scorpions.
Like with all my Aspects I've been buying the metals from Ebay rather than the finecast. I'd managed to get my hands on 18 regular Scorpions, 2 Exarchs with Scorpion's Claw and 1 Exarch with Biting Blade. So I decided that I would paint them up as one squad of 10 with a Claw Exarch in one colour scheme, and the other 9 regulars and 2 Exarchs in a different scheme. So they can be run as two small squads, or they can be a squad of 10 with a choice between claw and biting blade for the Exarch. That's the squad that I've painted first. I had a moment of horror earlier when I dropped the Biting Blade Exarch and bent the blade right back, but a bit of careful and determined bending got it back into shape. Thank goodness for the malleability of metal! Luckily it dropped on carpet and the paint didn't chip.
Anyway, some photos:
I'm also currently in the middle of painting 3 Windriders, 10 Dire Avengers and 5 Dark Reapers, so hopefully it won't be as long a wait until I finish something else. I'm also thinking it's about time I took another army shot, since the army has expanded quite considerably since the last one.
I don't know how I managed to miss an update, let alone three! Those are some lovely tanks and the vines are great! Your Guardians are superb, I like that you've gone for some green faceplates, I did that on mine too when I tried out Biel Tan!
Digging your colour choices on your aspect warriors, I really like the red and it's serving as inspiration for my own Fire Dragons! I like the dark yellow faceplates you've gone for on your Scorpions, it breaks the colour up nicely.
Tyranid Horde wrote:I don't know how I managed to miss an update, let alone three! Those are some lovely tanks and the vines are great! Your Guardians are superb, I like that you've gone for some green faceplates, I did that on mine too when I tried out Biel Tan!
Digging your colour choices on your aspect warriors, I really like the red and it's serving as inspiration for my own Fire Dragons! I like the dark yellow faceplates you've gone for on your Scorpions, it breaks the colour up nicely.
Thanks sir - I've missed plenty of updates myself on blogs that I follow, so I think it's easily done! I've definitely put quite a bit of thought into what colours I wanted to use on the Aspect Warriors, so I'm glad you like them. I'm planning on doing other squads in different schemes like they come from different shrines, so that ought to be fun. The red on the Fire Dragons is VMC Carmine Red, washed with AP Red Tone then edge highlighted with VMC Vermillion. The helmets are AP Chaotic Red, washed with AP Dark Tone and highlghted with VMC Carmine Red. Not exactly the same look as the old squad that I was emulating, but close enough.
On the Scorpions I wanted to do something close to the standard studio scheme with the yellow markings on the armour, but I didn't want to make them too bright, so I picked a yellow ochre. I also remembered seeing one of the old metal Autarchs painted up Biel-Tan with a green helmet and a dark yellow faceplate and always thought it looked really cool, so it was quite an easy choice to use for these Scorpions. As and when I get around to my other squad I'm contemplating doing them in a really dull/dark scheme that I feel would suit their role as stealthy ninja-elves somewhat better than bright colours do. That's part of the reason I didn't want to make the yellow too bright on this first group.
youwashock wrote:Yikes! Nothing quite like losing your grip on a freshly painted model to tighten that lower GI tract.
Looks like no harm done, thankfully. Another sweet looking squad down. Looking forward to that group shot.
Cheers - yeah I was pretty worried for a few moments there. Not least because at first I couldn't see where the model had bounced to. I'm sure a lot of us have experienced that, moving around absurdly carefully and watching every footstep just in case the model happens to be underneath it. It certainly happens to me pretty often when assembling things, when a part pings off somewhere and manages to hide in the carpet.
Captain Brown wrote:Bellerophon,
Beautiful Fire Dragons and Striking Scorpions.
You should try and track down a copy of WD 127, when the Jess Godwin models were introduced and the initial background was added.
Cheers,
CB
Thanks - I'll have a look for that one. I'd been gathering up all the old Codexes from eBay, and I'd been considering looking for some relevant issues of WD.
CommissarKhaine wrote:Ooh, my favourite aspect warriors . Looking good!
I find it so hard to choose between them, they're all so cool.
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I sorted out some army photos this afternoon. This time they're on my table tennis table. So I quickly set them up and put them away again before they faced any danger of stray ping-pong balls. Not the best lighting unfortunately, but I still think they look pretty cool together. I've got an army list spreadsheet and I've been using it to keep track of the size of the fully painted army, and it's about 2600 points currently. So that's about a quarter of the total then. There's a lot of work to do.
Thanks everyone, I'm really pleased you like them, it adds just that extra touch of motivation to my painting knowing that you guys are here.
I'm very proud of this army and the effort that has gone into them. I'm definitely sacrificing speed and any chance of getting through the pile at a reasonable rate, but I wouldn't be happy with myself if I let the standard slip. It's got to the point where the pile has grown to be rather daunting. I don't really regret buying it all, but at the same time I recognise the psychological pressure of having so many models still to finish. To list them all out:
Yeah. That's a lot of stuff to do. Pretty much double the number of Aspect Warriors that I've done already, and even more of everything else. The huge number of Farseers is because I've been deliberately collecting the old metal ones, as well as buying multiple boxed sets that have the current plastic one in them. By the time I'm done, I'll have pretty much every metal farseer they ever did, and a bunch of kitbashes off the plastic one. I'm very much looking forward to finishing this ridiculous seer council!
The scary thing is that even with all of these models there's plenty of things in the Codex that I don't have yet.
Captain Brown wrote:One or two models at a time Bellerophon...one or two models at a time.
Cheers,
CB
Indeed. I tend to do two or three squads at a time, jumping between them, like when I want the same colour on all three or when I'm waiting for a wash to dry or something. It often leaves me going a few weeks in between getting anything finished and feeling like progress is slow, but then there's a rush of completed stuff.
At the moment the next batch of Windriders are nearly done, and the Dire Avengers and Dark Reapers are up to the stage of edge highlighting.
Dysartes wrote:Nice work, Bellerophon - this blog is one of the reasons I'm looking at putting together a small Eldar force with some old school models...
You're definitely a contributing factor in me painting my own old Eldar. Even have me mulling over whether or not I want to slide a few Fire Dragons onto the table.
You're definitely a contributing factor in me painting my own old Eldar. Even have me mulling over whether or not I want to slide a few Fire Dragons onto the table.
Thanks very much, it's humbling to hear that I'm inspiring anybody to paint some Eldar.
As for the Reapers, it's been a while since the last update, but I've got them done along with the Dire Avengers and Windriders. I've just slotted them into the "points total of all totally painted models" army list spreadsheet, and the total is now approximately 3K points.
First, the Reapers. I've picked a scheme very similar to the studio scheme. These are the only Reapers that I have, and they were among the more expensive of my ebay purchases, presumably given that they're somewhat in demand this edition. So I was keen to own some in metal, but not keen to buy more than a squad at elevated prices. The batch that I won actually had the Tempest Launcher and the AML with it. I chose to equip the Exarch with the Tempest Launcher not for any game reasons, but purely because it's a weapon unique to the Reaper Exarch and I can get AMLs elsewhere if I want them.
Next, 10 Dire Avengers. I built my first 10 DAs as MSU 5-Eldar squads with dual catapults, which I suppose was a nod to the meta-state of the best way to run these guys. Even though I've never once played a game with the army. I sometimes wonder why I pay as much attention to the rules as I do. Anyway, having got that out of my system I wanted to build a 'classic' squad - 10 strong with a Diresword on the Exarch. My previous ones had been painted in a dark blue body/white helmet scheme, so I wanted to do something different and decided on a red helmet with a white faceplate, somewhat inspired by Asurmen's studio scheme. I was going to make the hair crests striped, maybe white and black, or white and green. I was going to paint them white and then add the stripes iater, but after I painted them white I realised that I quite liked the way they looked so I left them like that.
And my second batch of Windriders - nothing particularly new here, they're pretty similar to the first 3 I did, even down to the same selection of Biel-Tan rune decals on the jetbike bodies. Once again they're magnetised for all 3 weapon options and I've photographed these with scatter lasers.
Finally, about two weeks ago I was alerted to the fact that the Shadow Spectres Exarch was back in stock on the Forgeworld webstore. I'd fancied a squad of Shadow Spectres before, but I hadn't wanted to get any if I couldn't get the Exarch to go with them. I don't even know how long that one model had been out of stock (it felt like a couple of years), or why. I mean, it had been so long I wondered if they'd broken the mould or something and hadn't got around to making up a new one. But it was back, and perhaps a little irrationally I wondered whether it might be there for a day and then disappear for another year. So the same day it reappeared, I ordered a squad, the Exarch and Irrilyth. To my horror the postie left the box out the front of my house behind the bin, but luckily it was still there and in one piece when I got home from work.
Not much more to show on those. I've just been cutting and cleaning the pieces this afternoon. With getting my hands on these guys, the only Aspects that I don't have are Shining Spears. I think I've said before - I'll look to convert some on the current jetbikes if I figure out a conversion I'm happy with.
Lovely new additions. Reapers are always good to see, and I really like the deep red on the Avengers' helmets. Never owned Spectres. Looking forward to seeing what you do with them.
Thanks guys. I'm definitely looking forward to doing the spectres. I expect it will take me quite some time to get them done (there's so many things to work on!), but I'll probably work at them a little bit here and there. So far I've cut and cleaned all the pieces (fresh blade in the hobby knife and stabbed myself at least twice in the process...), but I haven't got as far as bending the prism rifles straight yet.
I've been doing a bit of building, and I've got another batch of Seers WIP on the painting bench that I should be able to get finished reasonably soon, to add to the ridiculous Seer Council. Also started putting some paint on my Avatar.
Time for another update. I’m trying not to take too long between these, but I’m also not really into sharing WIPs. I guess that just means I need to finish models faster.
Today I’ve got Phase 2 of my planned *Ridiculous Biel-Tan Seer Council*.
First off, another pair of Warlocks. I’ve got one of the older ones with the antlers and singing spear, and one of the newer ones with witchblade and shuriken pistol. Although of course ‘older’ and ‘newer’ are relative terms in this instance since the first is Rogue Trader 1991 and the other is 3rd ed 1999. Huh, I guess that means the 2002 Seer Council Box Warlock is the only one newer than 20 years old! Nothing spectacular on the paint schemes, just what you’d expect for Biel-Tan and the same way I've done my previous warlocks.
Two more Farseers – the pair from the 2002 Seer Council Box. I’ve actually got another pair of these, so I’m contemplating whether to convert them. Anyway, these first two I’ve done as-is. Farseers are one of the models so far where I’ve used some additional colours than just green and white (see the red, black and ochre on the cloaks on my first batch), since I figure their gear will be a bit more personal rather than standard issue. In that same spirit, I decided to give one of them a purple cloak. So that it didn’t end up looking too much like an Il-Kaithe scheme, I made the cloak lining white to tie in with Biel-Tan. The other one is pretty standard white/green.
Finally, the current Spiritseer from Wake the Dead. Nothing special done to this one, just built according to the instructions and painted in my standard scheme. It’s a nice model and I was pleased to see Craftworlds get a new release, even if it was just one mini. I was also happy that it was a proper Craftworlds themed model, since I’ve been a bit worried that GW might start making all new Eldar releases Ynnari, much like Primaris taking over from classic marines. Of course they might still do that, but we shall see.
As it happens the Finecast Spiritseer is one of the few that I don’t actually have, just because I’ve been avoiding Finecast. As far as I know that one was never metal, so I suppose I should pick up the Finecast one while it’s still around – they could quite easily decide to ditch it once the plastic one gets a separate release, and I don’t want to go buying second hand finecast on ebay. Metal’s fine because I can just dunk it in acetone! If I'm trying to get every seer model then that one needs to be part of it. I also may convert one of my many identical plastic Farseer sprues into another Spiritseer using the spare head from the Hemlock kit (I built the Crimson Hunter) and some High Elf bits. Maybe. Eventually.
On to group shots.
I’m going to repost my photograph of *Ridiculous Biel-Tan Seer Council* Phase 1:
And *Ridiculous Biel-Tan Seer Council* Phase 2:
All the Warlocks:
All the Farseers:
Finally, *Ridiculous Biel-Tan Seer Council* Phases 1 and 2 together:
I expect there will be at the very least a Phase 3 and Phase 4, just to get through the psykers that I already have, let alone any others that I may acquire along the way. Of course nobody would ever need that many for playing a game, but then this has always been more of a collection than a tabletop army.
As for other progress, I’m partway through painting my Avatar, and I’ve just started on 5 D-scythe Wraithguard. I’ve also built another 10 Guardians, and a War Walker. The Shadow Spectres are all washed and cleaned, just waiting to be stuck together.
But seriously, they look really good. That white is nice and crisp, the green rich, and that purple cloak is a nice splash of extra color. Can't wait to see the Avatar!
I am soon going to post photos in my blog of my ten strong Warlock Conclave that I am going to paint next. I converted a few warlocks slightly so I have ten unique models. I hope I can make mine look as good as yours!
Also, that finecast farseer was available in metal. I know, as I own one. Sadly only one though, or I'd let you have one cheap. Look out on eBay though.
That warlock in the middle, the fella with the sword in two hands, that's my guy!
What a great classic sculpt. You did him proud.
You did 'em all proud. Great job as ever.
:edit: aaaand I just realised I totally gave you the whole "squee I'm a total THAT-warlock fanboy" bit on page one. Haha, well great job on the whole collection anyway. It's an impressive amount of Eldar character minis.
Thanks everybody! I'm pleased with how they look, especially as a group. I already think the group looks like total overkill when posed together and there's plenty more of these guys still to do. I'm tempted to keep going on seers to keep dialling up the absurdity, but I feel I should paint a few other things first.
youwashock wrote:Wow, that post was absolutely psykotic.
But seriously, they look really good. That white is nice and crisp, the green rich, and that purple cloak is a nice splash of extra color. Can't wait to see the Avatar!
Cheers, I appreciate it. I've fallen in love with my own green recipe on these guys, haven't got tired of painting it yet.
Fifty wrote:That is really awesome!
I am soon going to post photos in my blog of my ten strong Warlock Conclave that I am going to paint next. I converted a few warlocks slightly so I have ten unique models. I hope I can make mine look as good as yours!
Also, that finecast farseer was available in metal. I know, as I own one. Sadly only one though, or I'd let you have one cheap. Look out on eBay though.
Thanks! 10 Warlocks sounds great, just my kind of collection. I look forward to seeing them. Do you mean the spiritseer? I've never seen it in metal, to the point that I'd largely accepted that I'm going to buy it in finecast. It can't be that bad, right?
Dysartes wrote:That's a good looking Seer Council, dude - will you be doing a mounted group as well?
I plan to. I probably won't do more than 3 or so, just because the price would add up rapidly buying many of them, and I've only got one so far (still on the sprue). The old start collecting with the farseer skyrunner, windriders and fire prism was pulled just before I started buying up eldar in earnest, otherwise I might have grabbed a few copies.
theCrowe wrote:That warlock in the middle, the fella with the sword in two hands, that's my guy!
What a great classic sculpt. You did him proud.
You did 'em all proud. Great job as ever.
:edit: aaaand I just realised I totally gave you the whole "squee I'm a total THAT-warlock fanboy" bit on page one. Haha, well great job on the whole collection anyway. It's an impressive amount of Eldar character minis.
I don't mind a second round of gushing - in another repeat of the first page, I love that sculpt too. Very purposeful and poised, a total classic.
I've been waiting ages for that Exarch to come back in stock! Hopefully it's still there next week! I've missed a few updates but those Dark Reapers are really nice!
Digging the Seer Council too, My collection is very much going the same way, although I don't have as many Warlocks. I think you're correct about the Spiritseer, that one was always resin. I'd have picked it up otherwise!
Tyranid Horde wrote: I've been waiting ages for that Exarch to come back in stock! Hopefully it's still there next week! I've missed a few updates but those Dark Reapers are really nice!
It appears to still be available now, so I guess it's back for good rather than briefly like I feared. They must have needed a new mould or something.
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Something new!
After working so much on my Seer Council, I figured it was time to do what I consider to be the iconic Biel-Tan HQ – the Avatar of Khaine! In my case - the Forgeworld version with the sword.
I bought this chap the first time I visited Warhammer World about this time last year. I went into the Forge World shop with a few models in mind but not totally sure what I was going to buy. If you haven’t been there, they have display cases all around the store with the models assembled and unpainted so you can see them in person before picking one up. I picked up the Avatar on my first pass through the store. I knew I wanted it. I felt like I wanted to buy more things and spent the next half hour or so going round that store looking at the models trying to decide what else I wanted. I couldn’t make my mind up – there was plenty of stuff I liked but perhaps not quite enough to want to buy it then and there. But the Avatar was never in question, so in the end that was my only purchase that day. And I’m so pleased that I got it when I did since it went OOP something like a couple of months later.
It was unassembled for quite some time, then assembled but not primed, then primed but not painted…
Then I bought the Shadow Spectres, the Exarch and Irrilyth, and realised that between those, the Avatar and the Scorpion I was acquiring quite a lot of £’s worth of Forgeworld models and I hadn’t painted a single one of them. The Avatar was the first in the queue, so I decided it was about time I got painting.
Given that’s it’s one of my favourite models and a thematic centrepiece to any Biel-Tan collection I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this one, and I’m really pleased with the result. My only regret is that the sword is ever so slightly bent, and I wish I'd realised and straightened it a touch before assembling it. Never mind though, I'm still really proud of the model otherwise.
Love it. He even has the traditional green/white Biel-Tan plume. Too good. If you are feeling adventurous, a soft touch with a hair drier (very soft) may help you with your sword.
Absolutely stunning paintjob, I'm disliking how Forgeworld aren't keeping their models in stock, sure, they're a little older and may not sell, but if the moulds are in okay condition why wouldn't they keep them in stock?
youwashock wrote:Oh, that is the MONEY right there.
Love it. He even has the traditional green/white Biel-Tan plume. Too good. If you are feeling adventurous, a soft touch with a hair drier (very soft) may help you with your sword.
Thanks! I thought that maybe I could have a go at bending it now, but I don't want to make a mess of things and it's close enough that it's not a major annoyance - so I figured best to leave it alone.
Ezki wrote:Now that is gorgeous!
The green looks fantastic and has a nice contrast to all the other colors.
Thanks very much! I've been enjoying painting green on this army, I've fallen in love with my own green recipe.
petrov27 wrote:Excellent Avatar - love the paint work!
Surprised that it is no longer produced though - sad as it is one of their best figures...
Cheers. Yeah, I think this one disappeared from the FW store with pretty much no warning. I don't know why because I agree with you - it's one of the best models they produced.
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The other thing I did yesterday was finish making the new base for my scorpion. The one I'd done a few pages ago was an oval, but I realised that meant that screwing it on and off the mounting on the tank the weight of the base wasn't centred so it was going to put stress on the mounting point. I decided to make a round one instead. Like the other one, it's a 6mm 'frame' MDF bottom part and a 2mm MDF top, laser cut. I stuck a bolt in the middle and held onto the bolt while holding my Dremel (with sanding attachment) against the outside edge, allowing it to spin the base. So I got a nice, symmetric sanding to even the base out and give the edge a touch of slope to be a bit more like regular 40k bases. It's a little rough so I may have a go with some finer sandpaper by hand. Not the best photo, but...
I'm still tempted to do a bigger base (I've already lasercut one) and put a longer bolt on it, to be more of a display base. I've 3d printed a Dreadnought wreck I found on Thingiverse that might make nice basing material with a Scorpion soaring high above it...
Edit:
Tyranid Horde wrote: Absolutely stunning paintjob, I'm disliking how Forgeworld aren't keeping their models in stock, sure, they're a little older and may not sell, but if the moulds are in okay condition why wouldn't they keep them in stock?
You're really tempting me with forgeworld models!
Thanks! This Avatar isn't even out of stock - it just vanished entirely. I'm quite miffed because it's one of my favourites but at least I got one before it went. I wonder with some of them whether they just get to the point where the mould is worn out and decide that it's not worth it to make a new one?
I also ended up making heavier bases for my Eldar tanks...I ended up doing a simple double large plastic rod system to steady the tanks and handle the extra weight on the front of the tanks from the FW resin parts.
whalemusic360 wrote:This is a good looking army project. I'll follow along for sure!
Glad to have you on board
Captain Brown wrote:Bellerophon,
Beautiful Avatar.
I also ended up making heavier bases for my Eldar tanks...I ended up doing a simple double large plastic rod system to steady the tanks and handle the extra weight on the front of the tanks from the FW resin parts.
Cheers,
CB
Thanks Captain. As much as I love Eldar grav tank sculpts, the flying bases leave a lot to be desired.
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It's been a while again since I last updated but I've been busy in the meantime. I've completed another 5 Wraithguard, a Wraithlord and a War Walker. For the Wraiths I decided to invert the colours from the ones I used on my first wraiths. I've said before that I love the way that you can invert the colours on Biel-Tan and it's still very obviously Biel-Tan, and that applies to the wraiths more than most - I think because they've been painted in both inversions in studio schemes over the years. For the first ones I did the Wraithguard green with white heads and the Wraithlord white with a green head, mainly because that's the way the studio tended to paint them back in 3rd.
So, the Wraithguard - This unit have D-scythes, and since my first unit was green with white heads, these are white with green heads.
And with the first unit:
The Wraithlord - again, fully magnetised. Since I've shown most stuff with Shuriken Cannons I decided to pick some random heavies to put on this guy for the photo. For both this guy and the War Walker I decided that I didn't want to use the scenic bases in their default state, since I've got three Wraithlords and three War Walkers and realised that 6 identical bases would be a bit much. I made rock formations over the broken eldar architecture/missle/whatever-it-is using milliput, and made some rock formations for them to stand on, mainly out of sprue for that nice poly cement bond to the model's foot. For the Wraithlord I've seen a lot of cool chopped and reposed ones, but since my first one was sort of walking, I fancied a classic standing pose - and raised one foot on a rock a little bit to make it a touch more interesting.
And the two of them:
The War Walker - like the Wraithlord I made a sprue-based rock formation to put one foot on. In this case it's almost like it's launching forward off a sloping rock. I'm not a massive fan of the way the War Walker looks when it's posed with one foot in the air, but I wanted a slightly more dynamic pose than the standard, and I think this works. It's got some movement to it, and it keeps the stability of having both feet firmly poly cemented down. As with the Wraithlord I disguised the scenic base with milliput rocks. Once again magnetised, and photographed with bright lances.
Two of them:
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Finally, I've been on ebay again. Why does this always happen? This time I've been buying Autarchs. I didn't have any up to now, but since I've collected all the seers I felt the urge to start on these guys. Which is irritating because they run pretty pricy. I picked up the current plastic hawk wings one and won an auction for the limited edition 2006 army box fella. I then found somebody selling the old metal warp jump generator and the metal swooping hawk wings model. I was a bit suspicious that they had both of them, and when they showed up I became pretty sure that they're recasts. Oh well, it's not like I could buy these brand new from GW anymore, and the detail is pretty good so I don't feel too bad about it. The only slight irritation is with the hawk wings model where some of the feathers came out short. They're not perfect but I'll rate it as better than not having them.
I need to stay away from ebay.
Here they are, glued and primed:
I was pondering whether I ought to enter one in this month's Art of War challenge, but then I realised that I won't have much chance to get one painted up in the couple of weeks that remain of April given that I'll be quite busy. Maybe, if I get a chance.
Related, I was also wondering about what I would do for a paint scheme. Clearly a combination of whites and greens, with maybe some reds on cloaks and stuff - but particularly I thought of this old studio paintjob on the warp jump generator model:
Spoiler:
I always thought that looked really cool, particularly the yellow colour on the faceplate and the way it pops with the white and green. It's what inspired me to pick a similar colour for my first group of Striking Scorpions, and now I'm kinda tempted to adopt it as a linking theme on my Autarchs - to give them all yellow ochre faceplates. I mean, it's got me wondering about Biel-Tan faceplate colours in general. Like the old 16-man guardian box on the box photo had mostly white faceplates, four green and one black - it left me wondering whether it was purely an aesthetic thing or whether it was meant to represent some sort of rank or battle honour. I have no idea, but I liked the mix so I've maintained it on my own guardians. And this yellow Autarch faceplate... I might try it. Maybe a couple of them white with green helmet, a couple green with white helmet, and a yellow ochre faceplate for all. Make it the signifier of 'Autarch' for my force. If it doesn't work I can always paint over a couple!
It was you! You pinched the WJG Autarch before I could get in on it! I'm surprised they're recasts considering they are metal models, I would have thought recasts were only resin. If I'm looking at the same listing, how are they in terms of quality? I may pick up one should they ever reappear.
Great work on the Wraiths and the War Walker, as usual, loving the crisp paint jobs!
Sweet work on the Wraiths. Seeing the two schemes together they all look really good. I look forward to seeing the Autarch band get painted and how your idea turns out.
Tyranid Horde wrote: It was you! You pinched the WJG Autarch before I could get in on it! I'm surprised they're recasts considering they are metal models, I would have thought recasts were only resin. If I'm looking at the same listing, how are they in terms of quality? I may pick up one should they ever reappear.
Great work on the Wraiths and the War Walker, as usual, loving the crisp paint jobs!
The first thing that aroused my suspicion was that they didn't seem to go out of stock after I bought them so I guessed they were selling more than one of each - so it's not just me to blame for buying them up! I bought both types, the WJG and the hawk wings. When they arrived they'd clearly never been built, from all the excess metal under the shoulder pads which stopped the arms going in properly, so I ended up having to Dremel that out. They were lacking the large number of casting gates that the real ones have, and the slotta tabs were partly formed, which leads me to think that they were entirely cast through the tab. Some of the bits also had holes in them that I guessed were on the original donor model for pinning, then got copied when that model was used to make a mould. They couldn't have been from building these exact models because they wouldn't go together due to the flash/excess metal. Also spotted one or two telltale double mould lines.
Aside from all that the detail is pretty good. My only real complaint is on the hawk wings model where some of the feathers came out short and there's a big mould line in the middle of the crest which was too much of a pain to try to get rid of. The WJG one came out really nice.
It's also weird to think that buying some of this stuff on eBay we could be competing ('we' in this case meaning the general metal model eldar community on here). I know it's the nature of it, but it feels vaguely strange to think about, like if I see somebody post photos of some old metals, they might be from an auction that I missed out on.
So, I finished the first of the Autarchs in time for the painting challenge. I picked the current plastic one as the first one to do and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out - also found that my plan to try painting all of their faceplates in yellow ochre (literally VMC Yellow Ochre) has so far worked from a sample size of one. I'm now interested to see if it will work as well when I do one with a green body and white helmet, since the yellow won't contrast so much against the white. I'm also really pleased with how the dark red on the cloak came out - especially on the middle photo in the collage at the bottom of this post. The base coat for that was VMC Hull Red which I just picked up recently, and I can already tell it's going to be a colour I will use at any opportunity! It was highlighted up through VMC Burnt Cadmium Red, and then the lightest highlights are Burnt Cadmium Red mixed with a bit of VMC Flat Red.
I'm currently halfway through painting up another 10 guardians and building a Fire Prism. I know I've complained before about having too many models to do, but once again I'm at the stage of plotting the next thing to paint and only managing to narrow it down to about half a dozen things!
One of the things that I'm tempted to do is my second unit of metal Swooping Hawks, if only because I actually played a game last weekend, put 10 Hawks on the table and enjoyed hiding behind terrain, flying to land right in front of a squad of presumably terrified guardsmen, then totally shredding the squad with lasblaster fire. Even better, we ran out of time and had to call the game off, so they didn't even have to take any return fire and all survived.
We'd come up with a narrative game where my opponent took a force of guard led by Eisenhorn who had captured a rogue psyker, and was trying to take him away for the Inquisition's purposes. A Biel-Tan force approximately 50% stronger were trying to capture the same psyker for their own reasons - but they had to act quickly to get him because a detachment of custodes would arrive from turn 3 that would tip the balance of power to the Imperium. Well, that was the idea at least. We didn't get that far! Anyway, despite the fact that we barely started before we had to stop, it was cool to see my models on a table. I took my Avatar, just because how could I not? I was also particularly pleased that he got the first kill for my side, striding forward and just getting the nearest guard squad within range of the Wailing Doom, melting one unfortunate guardsman before my army opened up on the same squad with shuriken. That was cool, but damn I loved my Hawks!
He's a solid bit of work. I personally love Hull Red, and agree wholeheartedly that it makes a great base to work from. Congrats on the game performances and I am looking forward to the next Autarch!
I have missed a few updates. Great work all around!
I like how the Autarch turned out. The yellow on the face pops out really well and the cloak is superb.
Definitely receives one of my votes for the challenge
Love the Autarch, really like the classic dark yellow faceplate I seem to remember the GW team painted at some point in the past. Best of luck in the challenge!
Cheers guys, glad I made it in time on one of them. I'm not in a rush to do the other Autarchs, but I imagine it won't be too long before they come to the top of the queue.
Over this weekend I've been building my Wraithknights. You may recall from a few pages ago mentioning that I was thinking of going against my usual magnetise everything philosophy and just gluing them together, and that's what I've done. I made a point of doing them all together so that I could arrange the poses to suit the weapon loadout for each knight.
So,
Heavy Wraithcannon Knight - the standard out of the box pose, putting the legs together with the fixing tabs. Nothing special here. There's nothing wrong with the out of the box pose, I just didn't want the same on all 3.
Suncannon Knight - rearranged the legs to be striding over a wrecked sentinel that I 3d printed (from Thingiverse - very cool model)
Sword Knight - I wanted to make this much more dynamic. I had the image in my head of running with the sword swept out to the side/behind, but when I got to putting the sword on it didn't look quite right. I experimented a bit and realised that the pose didn't look quite right for running, but worked better as a leap. I tried it with the sword up in the air and thought it looked pretty cool, as if the wraithknight is leaping into a vicious downwards blow. So that's how I went in the end. I also added a dead space marine to the base for a bit of extra something, with no legs since he's been torn apart at the waist. I put a little bit of wound guitar string sticking out the bottom of his torso to be part of his severed spine. A meltabomb on the floor just below his outstretched hand...
I still need to put the starcannons/scatter lasers/shuricannons onto them, but those are the last thing left. Just need to make my mind up whether to make those swappable or just build them fixed like I did for the main weapons.
I'm really pleased with how these came out, and also that I decided against magnetising. Even so it took me ages - so much dry fitting, masking tape and blu-tac to try out various poses before I committed to glue. Now to see if I end up trying to get one painted up for *this* month's painting challenge!
I've finished the first Wraithknight. They weren't necessarily going to be top of my queue, but they seemed very fitting for the month's painting challenge theme so I decided to bump one up the list a bit. I picked the suncannon knight. Even though it's a terrible choice in 8th, I just think it's a cool model and I wanted to get the paintbrush on it. I was also keen to see how the 3d printed sentinel on the base painted up, because I'm fairly new to 3d printing and hadn't actually painted any 3d prints yet.
To repeat some words I put in the painting challenge thread; on the whole I'm really pleased with how the paintjob came out, aside from a sputtering spray can of varnish that has left the surface a little bit grainy in places. I really need to get that airbrush and switch to airbrushing varnish - it's tough when you've spent ages painting a model and a spray varnish detracts from the model. It's not too bad though, and I think anything I try to do to 'fix' it would probably make things worse and I think I've managed to leave it in a way that it's not too noticeable.
It's generally painted in my standard Biel-Tan style for vehicles, which is a dark green base highlighted up through several different layers up to the panel edges. You can tell from the photos that I'm firmly on the side of not overdoing the gems on eldar - I prefer the idea that most of the bumps are things like sensor pods and it's only the ones in the settings that are actually gems. The Biel-Tan rune is actually one of the standard decals with freehand on top of it. Even though I knew I wanted to do the more colourful version of the rune I figured I could use the decal like a guide to make sure that I got the rune nicely proportioned. I threw in some Biel-Tan thorn designs on the white plates around the waist, this time in green. Those are totally freehand.
Thanks guys. I think it's starting to get towards the point where another army shot is in order, especially now it can have the wraithknight towering at the back. I'll see when I get round to it, or if I paint another couple of things first.
3D printing detail is not so critical on terrain pieces of destroyed vehicles...any holes or gaps become more battle damage.
Yeah exactly. I'm still experimenting and getting the hang of it. It's a standard FDM printer. My first few prints turned out great. The main issue I had with the sentinel was that the supports were fairly solid and in awkward places, so I made a bit of a mess of it in places removing them. But that's fine, because as you said, more battle damage! I wanted to spend longer on the wraithknight than on the base, so I did a pretty simple job on the sentinel. Even so I think it came out pretty well; khaki and a sepia wash on the body, gunmetal and a black wash on the metallics. Then liberal application of typhus corrosion and some AK interactive 'Accumulated Dust', to make it look like it had been crashed there for a while and wasn't just a fresh victim of the knight.
Since then I've tweaked some of my support settings to hopefully make them easier to remove. But I'm not totally sure how well that's worked because my latest prints have been having bed adhesion problems! Solve one problem, another one crops up.
Been rather a long break since my last update, but as usual I've been plodding along. I've finished my 3rd group of guardians, and second set of Swooping Hawks - and I've just tonight finished my Warp Hunter that I've painted for this month's challenge.
The guardians are fairly standard, painted as per my usual. The Hawks, I decided to craft a different shrine scheme. So these have ended up in a dark blue-grey, with a dark yellow for the wings and heads, sort of an early dawn/late dusk darkened sky and a bit of sunlight sort of theme. The Warp Hunter follows my usual vehicle style - that makes 4 grav tanks finished.
A few angles of the Warp Hunter:
I'm off to post it in the painting challenge thread shortly.
Now I'm working on my second squad of Howling Banshees. I'm keen to get my metal Aspect Warriors done, if only because it was enough of a pain to track them all down on ebay that I'd hate to get distracted by some other project before getting them all done - or if the incredibly unlikely happens and they actually get updated sculpts before I've finished painting the ones I already have. My Hawks are all done now, and this lot of Banshees will finish those too.
Next in the queue after the Banshees... I'm not sure. I've got a few more Seers and Autarchs that I'm gradually putting another coat on here and there, I might concentrate on getting those done. I'm also keen to keep at the Aspect Warriors, paint my Fire Prism and Crimson Hunter, and also to keep up doing my Forgeworld with the Scorpion and the Shadow Spectres. I mean, this stuff is far to expensive to wallow unpainted.
Gorgeous work Bellerophon, that Warp Hunter is stunning and it's already got my vote when the voting goes live.
Those hawks are very nice, I have a similar scheme in progress - blue/grey armour and pale blue/grey helms. Weapons will be the usual wraithbone for me.
Wow, really, really beautiful work! The classic models, the classic paint scheme, and just done to perfection. This is all so impressive. I just love the green and white scheme. This whole project makes me feel like I am reading a White Dwarf from the 90’s. Truly impressive work. I salute you.
Wow, thanks again everybody. I didn't quite expect such a reaction to the Warp Hunter, but I'm glad you all like it! It takes quite a long time to paint my grav tanks like that, but I love the result and plan to keep doing it. Problem is I've still got several to paint and would like to get my hands on a few more!
Complete: 2 Wave Serpents, 1 Falcon, 1 Warp Hunter. To Do: 2 Falcons, 1 Fire Prism, 1 Scorpion.
I've also got a Night Spinner turret that I was able to put together from the spare pieces from the Warp Hunter, it's only missing a cockpit canopy, so if I can sort that out I've got an alternative turret for my Fire Prism - but one of my mates has a grav tank chassis that he's not using, so he's offered me that in exchange for bits. So, I'll have a Night Spinner to do as well. Then, I feel that one Fire Prism isn't enough, and two Wave Serpents certainly isn't enough for a Swordwind this size...
The Riddle of Steel wrote: Wow, really, really beautiful work! The classic models, the classic paint scheme, and just done to perfection. This is all so impressive. I just love the green and white scheme. This whole project makes me feel like I am reading a White Dwarf from the 90’s. Truly impressive work. I salute you.
-Rids
Thanks, that's the sort of reaction that I love to see! Particularly the 90's White Dwarf, given that it was a 90's issue of WD that originally set me on this journey. I'm glad I've been able to evoke some of the paintjobs that made me fall in love with Biel-Tan in the first place.
In other news, I'm weak and couldn't resist ordering the Apocalypse box. I'll end up with more wraiths than I'll ever need, but they're cool so that's not a problem! I'm particularly liking the thought that I'll end up with 5 Wraithlords, which ought to look pretty cool as a group. It'll be like having a squad of them! I was also very keen to get my hands on a second plastic spiritseer. I've got several of the foot farseers on sprue that I want to do some kitbashing with, and another spiritseer gives me options. I'm thinking of bashing the spiritseer head, staff and backpiece onto one of the farseer bodies, and putting the warlock head off the skyrunner onto the spiritseer along with a witchblade or spear to make a plastic foot warlock. Should be fun to see what I can come up with.
I can’t believe I’ve not commented here before! Just finished looking through the back catalogue, and have to say I agree with The Riddle of Steel that it’s like looking through old white dwarfs! Your grav tanks look particularly sweet and a squad of wraithlords will be truly something to behold! Will you treat them all like your vehicles or switch up the white and green on some? Perhaps the leader could be white?
Incredible work on that Warp Hunter! It really was worth waiting for.
Always loved the design of that. Maybe I should order one somewhere in the future.
Thanks again for the comments folks, much appreciated, and I'm glad you like it. The army rolls on, plenty more to do.
gobert wrote: I can’t believe I’ve not commented here before! Just finished looking through the back catalogue, and have to say I agree with The Riddle of Steel that it’s like looking through old white dwarfs! Your grav tanks look particularly sweet and a squad of wraithlords will be truly something to behold! Will you treat them all like your vehicles or switch up the white and green on some? Perhaps the leader could be white?
Cheers! I've done two wraithlords already (photo of the two of them together on the previous page), one white body/green head, and one the other way around. I enjoy mixing them up, and I think it's one of the advantages to painting Biel-Tan when compared to other craftworlds. I think that's particularly the case for wraiths, because the studio have painted them both ways round over the years. I know back in the day when I first got into Biel-Tan, they tended to paint the wraithguard green with white heads, and the wraithlords white with green heads, but I've seen the inversions plenty too. I think I may lean towards green, if only because on something like a wraithlord/guard I think I can paint the green a bit faster than the white. There's a lot of highlights on the green, but layering up the white, doing my dark grey panel outline and then tidying it up with more white takes ages on something with so many panels and bumps.
Despite it feeling natural to invert the scheme on wraith units, I haven't really done it at all on guardians/vehicles. I've been tempted for a white to maybe do a Falcon totally white, but with green vine patterns or something, then come up with some fluff as to why it's different. I think that might look quite striking as part of a squadron of grav tanks in the standard green.
Back on the topic of the wraithlords, as and when I get around to them (it may be a while!) I may try some more dynamic/interesting poses, possibly with fixed loadouts. The two I've got are fairly standard poses and fully magnetised, so that covers my bases for wanting a wraithlord with X loadout when writing a list. I can get a bit more creative with the other three.
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Since I'm posting, do I have an update? Nothing finished at this point. There will be a minor delay in getting more Eldar done as I work on a High Elf Phoenix for this month's painting challenge, but I'm steadily progressing the eldar alongside. I've got a squad of Howling Banshees that are getting towards the final stages but still have a fair amount of highlighting to go. Also, after caving and buying the apocalypse box and realising that it left me with just 10 finished wraithguard but 25 untouched on sprue, I've built up 5 Wraithblades with axes, and got as far as putting some basecoats down. I've got another 3 windriders, a Fire Prism and a mess of characters on my painting bench too, which will probably be among the next units to be finished.
And I'm going to promise again that I'll sort out an up to date army shot. Eventually!
EDIT: The pictures I posted of the Warp Hunter, I later realised that I'd forgotten the underslung shuriken cannon. It's magnetised, and I'd just forgotten to pop it on. And now those photos look weird that it isn't there! Here's how it looks with the cannon attached:
A small update from me today, but with plenty more to come. I've finished (well, finished a few days ago but only just got around to photographing) my second squad of 3rd edition Howling Banshees. I've painted these in a scheme inspired by the Ebon Witch shrine, which I thought would make a good contrast against my more traditional all-over bone first squad. Completing this squad has pushed the points count of the fully painted army over 5k, which is a lovely milestone - even though I think the unpainted pile is about 7k, so I'm not quite halfway on points.
*Note - back to using gallery image links. I had some problems with them a short while back so some of the more recent posts have used imgur. Click on the pic for gallery page and full size*
Plenty more in the nearly finished stages that I should be able to post in the next week or so, so stay tuned! Particularly, a squad of Wraithblades and a Crimson Hunter Exarch which literally just need some finishing touches.
I have some finished photos of the Crimson Hunter Exarch; I played in a doubles game yesterday and wanted to have the flyer ready for it. It was 1500 points per player - my Biel-Tan and an army of Primaris, vs a chaos coalition of Death Guard and CSM/Daemonkin. I took a sorta-fluffy army with one or two concessions to what's good -
Farseer, Warlock, 20-model Guardian Bomb with 2 shuricannons, two 5-strong units of Dire Avengers, 5 Fire Dragons, 5 Dark Reapers, 7 Swooping Hawks, two Wave Serpents, the Warp Hunter and the Crimson Hunter Exarch.
Not a full report, but some highlights - Chaos went first, and blew up the Crimson Hunter turn 1 before it had a chance to do anything at all, and stripped 2/3rds of the wounds off the Warp Hunter. The Warp Hunter glided forwards and used the warp rift on a Chaos Leviathan and took about half the wounds off it; and was promptly blown up by return fire in Chaos turn 2. The Chaos army also took out 1/3rd of my ally's army when they blew up his Fire Raptor, which promptly exploded in the middle of a load of his other models and spread some mortal wounds around. We were pretty much done for from that point onwards. The Wave Serpents and the Tempest Launcher between them did quite well at taking out the enemy Havocs, but all the rest of the Dark Reapers plinked every single shot off the Leviathan without doing any damage. The two most memorable moments of the game for me were the Guardians and the Fire Dragons. The Guardians deep-struck in using the webway strategem, then with the aid of Guide and Doom promptly shredded a Daemon Prince. The Fire Dragons were happily riding in their Wave Serpent when it got crunched in close combat by a Defiler. They were thrown clear of the downed transport, picked themselves up and took aim. Four of the five shots wounded. The defiler had 12 wounds left. They were in melta range. The first two damage rolls were both 6. The other two were wasted. They killed it too well. It promptly blew up, and took out 3 of the Fire Dragons in the explosion...
Anyway, the Crimson Hunter Exarch... I decided to use pretty much the same as the studio scheme, except with my usual painting the inside of the cockpit glass. It came out a bit blotchy and it's the one bit of the model I'm not totally satisfied with. Just behind the cockpit I decided to use a small Biel-Tan decal, alongside the Exarch and the Crimson Hunter runes.
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And, since I had 1500 points of models out of the display case anyway, it seemed like a good time to do what I've been promising to do for ages and take some more full army photos. This comes to somewhere around 5250pts depending on upgrades. I haven't figured out the power rating recently.
Total:
5x Farseers
1x Spiritseer
5x Warlocks
1x Autarch
1x Avatar of Khaine
30x Guardians w/ 3 weapon platforms
20x Dire Avengers (two 5 model squads with twin catapult Exarchs, one 10 model squad with Diresword Exarch)
1x Bonesinger
10x Fire Dragons
20x Howling Banshees
11 Striking Scorpions (2 Exarchs, one with claw, one with biting blade)
10 Wraithguard (5 with Wraithcannons, 5 with D-Scythe)
20 Swooping Hawks
10 Warp Spiders
6 Windriders*
2 War Walkers*
2 Wraithlords*
5 Dark Reapers (Tempest Launcher Exarch)
1 Falcon*
2 Wave Serpents*
1 Warp Hunter*
1 Crimson Hunter Exarch*
1 Wraithknight w/ Suncannon & Shield, magnetised shoulder guns
(models marked * are fully magnetised for loadout)
Anyway, the photos. Open in the gallery for full size!
Thanks everyone! It was great seeing them all arrayed on the table like that, even though it took quite a while to set them up and then put them away again afterwards. It's a motivator to keep painting more as well, I'd love to see what it looks like after I paint up everything in the queue.
Fifty wrote: That is an awesome display. It would be amazing to one day put mine on the table next to yours for a massive game!
That would be great - and if/when it happens, hopefully I'll have painted up plenty more!
New additions - I've got a squad of wraithblades finished. I'd got these done a couple of weeks ago, but I've only just got around to taking photos. They were bumped up the list somewhat by my acquisition of the apocalypse box and realising that I suddenly had rather a lot of wraiths on sprue, which prompted me to get another squad done. I'm quite pleased with the effect on the axe blades - I painted them in VMC dark sand, then glazed over with VMC Transparent Blue mixed with a lot of medium. It was quick and dirty, but I think it's quite effective.
Also painted up two OOP metal Autarchs. I got these together on ebay from the same seller and I think I said at the time that I suspect they're recasts - but never mind. They were rather fun to paint, even if they did linger on my painting bench for longer than I intended -
Next on the list:
- 3 Windriders nearly finished
- 1 Fire Prism/Night Spinner basecoated
- 11 Rangers basecoated - recently picked these up from ebay to fill one of the holes in my collection and I'd like to get them done soon for actual gaming purposes
- 5 Shadow Spectres, Exarch & Irillyth finally built
I'm starting to wonder how long I'm going to keep hammering away at this excessive collection before I give it a break for another project. I think it's a sign of my love for the eldar that I've kept going, painting eldar almost exclusively for as long as I have, but recently I've thrown in a couple of different models for the painting challenge and it's been nice to have a bit of a change. Certainly though, there's particular models that I really want to get done before I set my green paints aside - namely my shadow spectres and scorpion (because FW is expensive enough without letting it sit around unpainted, and they're brilliant models) and also most of my old metals because I feel it would be a waste of effort tracking them down on ebay if I don't get them painted up!
I'm also contemplating finally getting myself an airbrush soon, I'd love to see if I can improve my layered green vehicle highlights, so I might get through a few grav tanks. Certainly I'd love to try it out on a falcon or something, then go all out on the scorpion.
Captain Brown wrote: I did not know they made those two Autarchs in metal...I always thought they were a plastic kit.
Keep at it Bellerophon and finish those Eldar...it is great when they are no more models stilling around when an army gets finished.
Cheers,
CB
Yeah, those were launched in metal when Eldar got the last major revamp with the 4th Ed codex. Very cool models, and had to pay a fair bit on ebay. As to finishing the Eldar... I've got many thousands of points to paint! At least a year or two's painting just to get through my Eldar backlog, and that's if I don't buy anything more. When clearly I'll be buying too many of the new plastic Howling Banshees, even though I have 20 in metal. Because it's plastic aspect warriors, and I feel an obligation to do my bit for helping them sell well enough to encourage GW to update the others too, that and they look cool. So, I'm keeping at it for now, there's definitely things I'd like to get painted before I allow myself to get too sidetracked (doing a High Elf Prince for the painting challenge atm...), but after I get through my remaining Forgeworld stuff I might have a bit of a break. I'll see how I feel when I get there.
I finally caved and bought an airbrush. It's a cheap Chinese model, but with a decent tanked compressor. I'm still getting used to it, but I can see how it will be really useful for laying down smooth basecoats - especially for my white. I've also started using it for varnishing. All of this army so far has been sprayed with Army Painter Anti-Shine Matt Varnish from a rattlecan, it's always come out rather satin and rattlecans can be a bit of a pain. I never really tried any other brands of spray because I know they can be finicky and I figured better the devil you know - and it was good for consistency. But now with an airbrush, I'd heard good things about AK Interactive Ultra Matte, and I'm a fan of AK Interactive in general. So I got some, and damn it's good. Beautifully matte like I wanted all along, though it does leave the models feeling a little bit waxy. I'm sure I'll get used to it.
Anyway, I've finished my Rangers. The latest haul from ebay, and one group even had the direct only ranger that I inexplicably didn't buy when they went on made to order. Strike off another one for my sense of completionism.
And three more windriders for the group, bringing the total to nine:
I was tempted my the newer Rangers for my Alaitoc, but I took a few deep breaths and then thought how much larger they would be than the old Rogue Trader models and I was able to resist.
Just read through the entire blog, absolutely lovely painting. I love the story too - great that you are making the army of your dreams! Biel-Tan are definitely the best Eldar faction.
The green is excellent - have been looking at revisiting my old (late 90s) collection with newer paints...
I was leaning towards the GW range before seeing this (Caliban green -> warboss -> moot green), which have the advantage of air + thicker options.
Have you had a chance to muck around with their current range - and is it pretty close to your vallejo build?
Thanks everybody! No new progress as yet, I've been away for work, and my most recent in-progress is still the High Elf Prince on Griffon that I'm trying to get done before the end of the month for the painting challenge.
Da Boss wrote: Just read through the entire blog, absolutely lovely painting. I love the story too - great that you are making the army of your dreams! Biel-Tan are definitely the best Eldar faction.
I certainly think so!
Ekfud wrote: The green is excellent - have been looking at revisiting my old (late 90s) collection with newer paints...
I was leaning towards the GW range before seeing this (Caliban green -> warboss -> moot green), which have the advantage of air + thicker options.
Have you had a chance to muck around with their current range - and is it pretty close to your vallejo build?
Unfortunately not - the only Citadel paints I use at the minute are the technicals. Looking at those colours online I think my Vallejo recipe is slightly more towards the yellow side of green and those Citadel paints have a bit more blue tint in them - but that could be massively off the mark just due to how my monitor is reproducing the colours.
I am trying to go for the same look on my spinner weapons as you have on your spiders.
Do you remember the steps/colours you went through to achieve that nice yellow to red blend?
Now that's a good question. I honestly can't remember the exact paints I used, and I don't think I wrote down the recipe anywhere. Best guess from looking at the models and my paint racks is that the colour progression is something like (all VMC unless stated) Vermillion - Scarlet - Light Orange - Golden Yellow - Golden Yellow/VGC Dead White mix. I've got a half-painted Night Spinner turret on my painting bench, and that's probably the scheme I'll use to try to match the Warp Spiders.
I've been really quiet this last month. I've had a few things going on, but having painted a couple of non-eldar things for the painting challenge, and worked on a couple of bits for my Deathwatch, the Biel-Tan progress has been slow.
Argive wrote:Thanks!
Do you remember if you started with a white undercoat on the entire barrel?
Hey, sorry I missed this question. If it's still relevant at all, I primed these guys in a red auto primer. It was a bit more of a rusty sort of red, I probably painted the barrel a brigther red and then worked up to the oranges/yellows from there.
Elbows wrote:Love everything I'm seeing here. Proper Biel Tan Eldar are far too rare.
Cheers. Yeah, I don't see them all too often. It's nice to be one of the guys flying the flag for them, so to speak.
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Latest completed models - the Shadow Spectres and Irillyth. I'd waited for ages to pick these up, because the Exarch had been continuously out of stock on Forgeworld for what felt like a year. As soon as I spotted it was back earlier this year, I placed the order the same day. But, eager as I was to get my hands on them, I took my time over putting them together. It was a real pain to figure out where to put all the streamers/ribbons, and even then I only realised when I was most of the way through painting them that a couple of them have the beginnings of a streamer on their right arm that I was clearly supposed to attach one to, and didn't realise. Oops, well, it's barely noticeable...
What's on the painting bench at the minute? Well, I've got a Fire Prism/Night Spinner mostly finished. I was able to build both turrets (you get an entire prism/spinner turret left over from the Warp Hunter kit), I'm only lacking the cockpit window. I've also got the next batch of seer council at various stages of painting. I've not been actively going at those, it's been more putting a bit of paint on them here and there when I've got some leftover of a particular colour on my palette, but I might make an effort to finish them up. It can get a little depressing if the same models sit half-finished for too long.
Still lots to work at. I still keep meaning to get around to painting my Scorpion, the remaining two Wraithknights, and more metal aspects. I've also got a surplus of wraithguard/wraithlords from foolishly caving in and buying the Apocalypse box, so I ought to work through some more of those. I had really been looking forward to Jain Zar and the new banshees, but I wasn't about to buy the Phoenix Rising box - I've got enough Falcons and Vypers and didn't want the Dark Eldar half. So I'll wait for them to see a separate release before I pick any up - it's not like I don't already have too much stuff to work on.
Painted total is approaching 6k points, but the total models in the collection is more like 13k... a lot of painting still to do!
Lovely models. They look good with the green cloth to tie them in with the Craftworld.
I have always felt that Irillyth (sp?) was not far enough removed visually from the regular Spectres. He has always struck me as a jazzed-up Exarch rather than a Phoenix Lord.
Good to see new work from you. Looking forward to more wonderful green Eldar.
Back again! Thanks for the comments everybody, I appreciate them.
I've been busy working on the third phase of my Ridiculous Seer Council. To the point where I have now finished every generic foot Farseer, Warlock and Spiritseer that has ever been released - at least as far as I know. Phew! Took a fair bit of ebay trawling to gather them all.
Seer Council Phase 3:
Warlocks Through the Ages:
The Spiritseers:
Farseers Through the Ages:
Ridiculous Seer Council - Phases 1, 2 and 3 Assembled. I love seeing this many together!
And I'm still not finished. I've got a couple of the skyrunners to do, another of the new plastic spiritseer, and I want to say... 4? of the plastic foot farseer. So, there is a fair bit of kitbashing in my future to create a bunch more unique plastic seers to see just how far I can continue to expand this utterly ridiculous seer council. Just because I can.
EDIT: Just realised I didn't even put the Bonesinger in that photo. Heh, I'll have to remember to include it next time once I've done the kitbashes...
Next will be my first Fire Prism, I've just got the canopies to finish. It's been sat like that for a week or two actually, I need to get that finished. I've also picked up a couple more Falcons. Amusingly, the fact that I didn't need more Falcons (or Vypers) was one of the reasons that I skipped Blood of the Phoenix, and yet when I saw how cheaply people were selling the new-on-sprue Falcons on ebay I couldn't resist picking up two. I'm very tempted to try to convert/kitbash one into a Firestorm, just for the fun of it.
Wow man! Great going.Thats a serious seer council! The white on the warlock heads is hella smooth! I always find trying to do white in small areas end up chalky :(
Man I need to get my ass in gear and get paintin! Putting the rest of us to shame.
I really want to put our Seer Councils down on the table next to each other at some point. Maybe one day at Warhammer World.
By the way, you really ought to include a Forgeworld Wraithseer in your army to complete the full set of Eldar Psykers. (And possibly consider converting the plastic and metal Eldrads)
Argive wrote:The white on the warlock heads is hella smooth! I always find trying to do white in small areas end up chalky :(
I've got no particular secret there really, it's just layered up through light grey to two or three coats of thinned Army Painter Gorgon Hide.
CommissarKhaine wrote:Quite the council . I have to say, the first farseer (the one pointing with sword sheathed on his back) is the archetypical farseer for me.
It's completely classic. Different to the others, and yet still looks fitting alongside them.
Fifty wrote:That is awesome!
I really want to put our Seer Councils down on the table next to each other at some point. Maybe one day at Warhammer World.
By the way, you really ought to include a Forgeworld Wraithseer in your army to complete the full set of Eldar Psykers. (And possibly consider converting the plastic and metal Eldrads)
That would be very cool indeed. I'm still not finished though! Good point on the Wraithseer, I hadn't especially thought of getting one, but it's definitely now on my radar for completeness. I'd thought of converting some Eldrads, like you said, and the kitbashes with my other new-on-sprue plastics... See how many more I can do.
Finished the FIre Prism that I was promising last time round. It's the first grav tank that I've worked on since picking up my airbrush. I think the contrast between the middle of the panels and the highlights isn't quite as much as my previous hand-brushed grav tanks, but I think it still came out well. I've started work on another Falcon where I might try to get a bit better match to the others. I've also started another squad of Fire Dragons, and I think it's really about time I started on my Scorpion, or another Wraithknight...
Could be because you mentioned it, but the green does seem a little subdued. Still marvelously clean, and that lovely blue is the star of the show anyway.
Thanks guys. I think the reason there's a bit less contrast in the green is that my brush highlights on my older tanks were a bit more precise. The airbrush ones are smoother, and spread out a bit more, so there's less of the really dark green still showing.
I've started working on the Scorpion, decided to enter it into this month's open round on the painting challenge. Still a very long way from finished, but I've got the green done and pretty pleased with it. I don't normally post WIPs, but couldn't resist this one!
I've finished the Scorpion, been working at it pretty constantly, such a nice model and I really wanted to get it finished. After the last WIP, I finished off the white on the underside, and did the runes and vines. The vines were as per usual, though I did try to make them a bit denser than I'd done on some of my other recent vehicles. The runes I used the larger transfers, but once they were on I wasn't entirely satisfied with how they looked and resolved to paint over them with the golden version of the Biel-Tan rune that I've painted a few times before. It took a little while but I think it was worth it. Let's start with a nice big remotely-hosted image, then a bunch of clickable gallery links:
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And having finished the Scorpion, I was itching to see how the army looked with the Scorpion right in the middle of it. I've updated my spreadsheet that I've been using to keep track of the host, and this lot comes to about 7200 points - or at least it did before the latest Chapter Approved, I haven't updated my points cost lists yet. Even after all this painting I've got about 6K worth of stuff still to paint, apparently!
Again, a nice big remotely hosted image, then some gallery links:
There's more pictures of the army and the Scorpion in my gallery.
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What's next? It might be the new year before I post anything else now. I've got another 10 Fire Dragons and another Falcon most of the way through painting, so they'll be the next finished models.
After that, I've got too many priorities! I'd like to:
- Keep working at my stash of metal Aspects (got more Fire Dragons, Striking Scorpions and Warp Spiders to do)
- Do the 4th Ed Army Box Autarch
- Paint my other two Wraithknights (the only models in that Detolf that aren't painted yet, now that the Scorpion's done)
- Do some more wraiths, just because I've got 20 more Wraithguard and 3 more Wraithlords on sprue
- Do some vypers, because I haven't done any yet.
And that's not even taking into account wanting to work on things for other armies! I've got some Imperial Knights I haven't touched yet, the new Sisters of Battle box, some unbuilt stuff for my Salamanders and my Deathwatch, a handful of Harlequins and a consistent urge to get into full 40k scale Titans, both Eldar and Imperial... So, plenty of painting to do.
Thanks so much everyone, I'm glad the army can elicit such reactions! I'm very proud of them, and plenty still to do.
I didn't do much over Christmas, but I've just in the last couple of days finished my second squad of Fire Dragons. Gallery link as usual.
It's another squad of 10, with the Dragon's Breath Flamer on the Exarch. I picked the scheme just because I'd seen somebody else paint a similar scheme at some point and thought it was cool, tied in with the same dull bronze for the fusion guns that I used for my first squad. I'm really pleased with how the colours for this squad came out. I wasn't convinced for a while when I was painting due to the shine I was getting on the helmets, but as soon as I hit it with a few coats of Ultra Matte it really pulled together. The only problem since I started using this varnish a couple of months ago is that it makes me want to go put a couple of coats over all the old models, which would mean either masking or re-glossing the spiritstones...
I've still got a Falcon most of the way towards being painted, and I've built a squad of Wraithblades and a Wraithlord that will probably get some paint on them shortly.
They are a very impressive force all captured together! Crazy how much you've powered through. I love the darker red on the dragons - looks really sinister. Excited to see what comes next!
I'm fond of how that red came out. I'm not totally sure I'm getting this right since I did the red before Christmas, but I think it was one of my favourite paints - VMC Burnt Cadmium Red, an all-over wash of AP Dark Tone, then a subtle highlight back up with Burnt Cadmium Red.
I seem to always start these updates by apologising for how long they take, but at least this is a big one. I'd managed to finish a few things without ever quite getting around to posting them.
Let's start with the main event - angry ghost robots with big swords! I built a squad of wraithblades with swords, I'd had a wraithknight with sword built for some time, and also wanted to re-pose a wraithlord into more of a running pose. For that wraithlord, I fancied just building it with the sword and magnetising the shuricats/flamers - no heavy weapons. I figured I've got two fully magnetised lords, so I was happy to make this one more fixed. With that in mind, I liked the idea of painting all three sizes of wraiths-with-swords at the same time.
To the photos - there's a few more than this in my gallery.
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Phew. What comes after such a team of wraiths? How about another Falcon?
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Okay, one more. Another squad of Striking Scorpions. After my first squad were in a more traditional apple-green with flashes of yellow sort of scheme, I decided for these that I wanted to do a really dull, drab scheme that's quite fitting for sneaky ninja-elves. So, I kept it dark, kept the highlights subtle, etc. It was a fairly quick squad to do, but I'm pleased with how they came out.
Nice work man! Those blends on the WK are beautiful!!
Did you find the WL knees bit of a pain to convert? I've done all 3 of mine and they are a pain lol.
I love wraiths. You have done a superb job! Not sure Im sold on the darker scorpions. I do like the OG paint scheme better but they still look great of course! Putting my Eldar to shame as always
Thanks both! Regarding the blends, it's been much easier to pull those off since I picked up my airbrush. It's only a cheap one but it's already had a rather large impact on my painting process.
Argive wrote: Did you find the WL knees bit of a pain to convert? I've done all 3 of mine and they are a pain lol.
Absolutely. My first 2 were done without re-posing - so one of them is sort of gently walking forward and the other one standing still, so it was about time I hacked one apart at the knee. It was enough of a pain to chop the joint open without damaging the bits I didn't want to damage, then when I went to drill holes to pin the knee back together, my Archimedes drill jumped out of the plastic and jammed the 0.8mm drill bit right into my finger...
Argive wrote: Not sure Im sold on the darker scorpions. I do like the OG paint scheme better but they still look great of course! Putting my Eldar to shame as always
Oh yeah I love the brighter scheme too - so my first 9 scorpions and 2 exarchs are in a brighter green with a lot of mustard yellow. What I really enjoy doing with aspects is coming up with colour scheme variations for different shrines of the same Aspect. And I've got a lot of metal aspect warriors.
On the Aspect Warriors topic, I've also picked up the new Jain Zar and one box of the banshees. I still love the design of my twenty 3rd edition metal banshees, but I wanted to support the first new Aspect Warrior release in years. Unfortunately, the pricing somewhat put off even a diehard Aspect collector like myself, to the point where I went from considering 2 or 3 boxes to only getting one. I'd been thinking of either building a 10-banshee squad, or getting 15, doing one exarch of each loadout and then being able to field MSU or a full squad with choice of exarch purely from the new models. But even with FLGS discount, £32.50 RRP put me right off that. Shame. Who knows, maybe I'll pick some more up if they put them in a battleforce down the line or something.
Thanks again guys. I'm also rather fond of how the faceplate came out on the wraithknight. I was trying to get some reasonably different schemes across my 3 wraithknights, so the first is almost entirely green, white head, black faceplate. This one has the different faceplate and more white on the under-armour panels, and I think the third one I might do mostly white.
I feel like the scorpions need a bright spot colour. Maybe bright yellow or red eyes? Or even bright green.
Ordinarily I'd agree, but I deliberately wanted these guys to be really dull all over - I even went to the extent of doing the gems darker than I normally would, and using darker metallics with a heavier wash on the hoses and such. Nothing bright to give them away while they're hiding in ambush!
One (small) new squad - this time it's another MSU squad of Dire Avengers with dual shuriken catapults on the exarch. That leaves me with three such squads, and one squad of 10 with a Diresword Exarch. I've got 10 more avengers, I expect I'll build them with a glaive/shield exarch when I get around to it. For this squad I decided I'd like to do a lighter tone of blue, since my previous DA's were all on the darker side. So these are VMC Andrea Blue, an all-over wash of Army Painter Blue Tone mixed with Vallejo Matt Medium, then highlighted with VMC Deep Sky Blue.
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Vypers. I hadn't done any until now, and one of the reasons that I'd put it off is that I knew I wanted to convert them to be swappable between the underslung shuriken catapults and the shuriken cannon - and anybody familiar with Vypers will know that they only come with the 90's style catapults, and that they're fairly well built into the vyper's body. I decided that what I wanted to do was convert a mount that could take the new underslung weapons from the windriders, and it seemed to be a suitable first thing for me to 3d model myself for my FDM printer. I've already got my windriders magnetised, so all I needed to do was replicate the mount, make it fit to the Vyper, and stick a magnet in it to line up with the ones on the weapons. So this is what I came up with -
It required a slight chopping of one of the peg that goes through it (normally the peg that goes into the standard shuriken catapult - there's a hole in my new piece, but I needed to chop the peg to not stick out at all because that's where my magnet needed to go. And then fitting the other piece, I needed to chop a few bits off so that it would fit and so that the windrider weapons would fit on -
I also wanted to mod the heavy weapon mount on top to be swappable. I did that by enlarging one side by gluing some sprue on it, so that it would better take a 2mm hole. Then I used one of the weapon cowling pieces from the weapon sprue and glued a piece of 2mm rod into it. So just put the weapon in position, then slide the rod through the hole in the side of the mount, and in through the hole in the weapon. A slightly crude solution but it works well enough.
So I've applied those mods to 3 Vypers. They're currently being painted, along with a Hemlock.
Cheers guys. The Vypers and the Hemlock are now finished! The project rolls ever onward. The Vypers are all fitted with the mods I showed in my last post, though these photos don't really show them off. I really enjoy painting this green scheme, and the Hemlock in particular was a nice canvas for it. Enough that I decided to limit the vines to the nose/centre of the model so that I had nice large areas on the wings where the green wasn't being covered up.
I'd say they look a bit richer than this in real life, but the auto-adjust on the gallery upload overcompensates, so like with everything else in this thread I've uploaded them unadjusted.
I've said before, but I think updates may be a bit slower from here on - I'm starting to spend some more time on my other projects (none of which have been blogged here - yet). I still want to keep working at the Eldar, I just might do a few other things in between Eldar units. I'm currently batch painting a big group of Sororitas, I'd like to do my Imperial Knights, I'm gradually building a full-size Forgeworld Warlord Titan, and I've also recently bought into Adeptus Titanicus. Plenty of non-green decidedly un-thorny things to get on with.
So if the Eldar are getting a bit less painting bench time, what am I going to concentrate on?
- My 3rd Wraithknight is now the only thing in its display case that isn't painted, so that's got to be high on the list. I'm thinking of doing it in a mostly white scheme with a green head and maybe a bunch of green thorns, to distinguish it from the other two.
- The 4th Ed Army Box Autarch has been sat on the desk for some time. As a cool, fairly rare model I'd like to paint it up as my 'senior' autarch to stride into battle alongside the Avatar
- There's another 10 Warp Spiders and 10 Fire Dragons in one of my other cabinets, just waiting to see a paintbrush
- Phase 4 of the Ridiculous Seer Council.
- Perhaps another Wave Serpent or Falcon
So yeah, though I'm spending more time on other projects, there's still not a lack of things to do for the Swordwind. I think perhaps once I've done the 3rd Wraithknight it might be time for another set of full army photos.
Excellent work, as always. Nice that you let the green have the...limelight...on the Hemlock. It is quite pretty. Plans for WK3 sound solid. Looking forward to more Eldar as well as any of the other things you have cooking.
For those asking about my other projects (and if you haven't already seen it yet) I've started blogging my Titans. Within you'll find a full size Forgeworld Warlord, eventually some supporting Knights/Admech, and my Adeptus Titanicus models.
Back to the Eldar, I've completed a model that I was very keen to get done - the Autarch from the 4th Edition Army Box. It's not exactly an easy model to get hold of, but my constant ebay vigilance paid off. Because of the relative rarity and having to pay a premium for it, I definietely wanted to get it painted, and to do the paintjob justice - hence the more detailed freehand runes on the banners. I also couldn't resist a photo with the rest of the Autarchs.
What's next will depend on how soon I can tear myself away from painting God-machines, but the most likely options are the same ones I listed before. The third wraithknight, more grav tanks, more Warp Spiders or more seers. I've also got some Harlequins that I'll probably cover here as and when I do them - they're close enough allies to merit a place in this blog.
Not much work on the Eldar in quite some time due to the other projects (I've got a fairly sizeable update to post to the Titan blog...), but I have been trying to keep chipping away here and there. To that end, I've done my second unit of metal warp spiders. Very few metal aspect warriors left to do really, I've got 10 more Fire Dragons and a small squad's worth (not sure how many now I think of it) of Striking Scorpions. Still a fair few other things to do too though.
For this squad I've gone for a fairly bright red, and flipped the black and white round on the head and carapace - black head and white carapace. I've done a quick freehand of the Warp Spider rune on the carapaces which I think has come out fairly well.
Thanks guys. The runes were a bit of a quick job really, so I'm glad they came out that well. Just a brush with a good point, VMC German Grey mixed with a touch of airbrush flow improver and a steady hand.
I really ought to do another full army shot but as I've said before I'd like to get the third wraithknight done first.
Thanks guys, and apologies for the long wait for the next update - other projects have held much of my attention. I've finished another Wave Serpent and a Falcon. Nothing special on the Wave Serpent really, my standard grav tank job. I'm marginally disappointed in the contrast between the deepest and brightest greens on this one. Since I've started doing the gradients with my airbrush I haven't quite achieved the same pop that I did when I did everything with a hairy stick, but it's definitely been quicker. But the Falcon... I fancied changing things up a bit, so this one's white! I liked the idea of having a single white grav tank with green vine patterns to stand out from the rest. At some point soon I'm going to have to get all of them together for a group photo of grav tanks - and indeed as I've mentioned a few times, new army shots.
What else have I been up to? Well, for one I've been working at the next expansion of my seer council. From the previous pages you can see that I've already covered every generic eldar foot seer model that ever saw wide release. So what now? Well, first off I've got two skyrunners that I've assembled as one farseer and one warlock. And I had a number of the plastic foot farseer spare (that's what I get for buying 3 of the current Start Collecting set, and 3 of the Christmas Battleforce from a couple of years ago...) and I also had a spare of the latest plastic Spiritseer. Time for a kitbash! I took two of the farseers and the spiritseer, some leftover skyrunner parts and some shuriken pistols from the Harlequin Troupe kit and came up with the following. The painted two are the models built as per the instructions, and the grey plastic are the kitbashes.
I like the standout grav tank. Its neatly different but not too ostentatious. I guess its the PL's persona command grav tank
Loving the subtle conversions. Im looking to do something similar. I have a bunch of foot seers from various boxes. if you are struggling for ideas some of the DE reaver helmets work really well IMO as seer heads.
All around lovely stuff. Make a man jealous as always
P.S. Is the white "Glare" on the canopies painted on, are is it light reflecting of varnish?
Thanks both - it's definitely been good to get back to some eldar after working on other things. One thing I didn't mention in the last post is that I've also basecoated my 3rd wraithknight and built a bunch of harlequins, so hopefully I'll be posting those at some point in the relatively near future.
Argive wrote: I like the standout grav tank.
Its neatly different but not too ostentatious. I guess its the PL's persona command grav tank
Loving the subtle conversions.
Im looking to do something similar. I have a bunch of foot seers from various boxes. if you are struggling for ideas some of the DE reaver helmets work really well IMO as seer heads.
All around lovely stuff.
Make a man jealous as always
P.S. Is the white "Glare" on the canopies painted on, are is it light reflecting of varnish?
Thanks for the tip! I've got two more of the foot farseers I believe (did have 6, but I gave one to a friend), but I'll probably leave those for a further expansion of the seer council at a later date. I'm tempted to pick up Eldrad and kitbash him with the regular farseer models - and I've also been meaning to grab the old metal Eldrad and convert him too. In the battle report from the issue of White Dwarf that made me fall in love with Biel-Tan back in 3rd, the farseer was a converted Eldrad, it would be cool to try to replicate it. This seer council will be extra absurd by the time I'm done.
The glare on the canopies is just a reflection - the blue paint is on the inside surface and I varnished the tanks before gluing the canopies on, so the outside is the bare, shiny clear plastic.
Once again I'm starting a post thanking you all for your comments. I'm trying not to sound too same-y to previous posts, but I'll just repeat that I really do appreciate it. It's nice to know that there's some appreciation for my (not so little any more) project.
In between working on Imperial titans, I've found the time to put some paint onto my 3rd Wraithknight. This is the one with the heavy wraithcannons. Way back closer to the start of the thread than now I'd posted all three wraithknights when I built them, one with each of the main weapon loadouts, and this was the last one I still had to paint. It's the most 'standard' of the three in that this is the one that I built with the standard leg pose and did less with the base, so I've made it stand out with a crisp white paintjob rather than the majority-green that the other two got. I'd been tempted to do some green vines on it in the same fashion as the white Falcon I posted last time, but I wasn't sure how well they would work wrapped around a wraithknight's legs, so I left it clean. As usual, it's a gallery link.
I've also worked on my Harlequins. I hadn't really planned to do a Harlequin force. A friend-of-a-friend was selling off a load of old 40k stuff that he had, and it included the 4th Edition metal Harlequin troupe (with an extra couple of players over what came in the set), and the 4th edition Death Jester and Shadowseer, and I couldn't resist that lot for the price that was offered. Then later on I picked up the current plastic Harlequin troupe set. I figured it would add to the metal Harlequins, and I also wanted to get my hands on some of the shuriken pistols from the set to go towards the various farseers and warlocks that I wanted to kitbash. Hence building the Harlequins using both of the set's fusion pistols and both of the neuro disruptors so that I had maximum shuriken pistols left over for farseers.
I decided to paint these as Frozen Stars. I like the scheme, and I also liked that it didn't involve diamonds or other patterns. I've got so much stuff to paint that I didn't want to pick an overly time consuming scheme - just something that I could paint with my usual level of time and effort. I also thought that they fit well in their fluff, (at least on my superficial Lexicanum search), since they're described as defending Maiden Worlds and caring about the resurgence of the Eldar, which I feel fits very well with the character and motivations of Biel-Tan, plus there's at least one piece of lore about them fighting alongside Biel-Tan. And to top it off they're said to distrust the Ynnari, which is perfect, because I'm an old school Eldar purist and I distrust what GW was trying to do with the introduction of Ynnari (and the fact they fractured my Craftworld to do it), so any Masque that dislikes them is okay with me!
I feel progress from here will continue to be slow but I've still got plenty to work on. I've got those kitbashed seers and a couple of skyrunners primed, so I might try to paint them soon, or maybe my final batch of metal Fire Dragons, or perhaps some of my remaining Dire Avengers, Guardians or Wraithguard. I'm also planning on getting some updated army photos fairly imminently since it's been a long time since the last ones. Just off the top of my head since the last time I took a full army shot I've added two Wraithknights, a Hemlock, at least two grav tanks, 3 Vypers and at least a few infantry squads.
Another great update, the White of the Wraithknight is fantastic. The Harlequins came out well too. I’m with you that Eldar and Dark Eldar should remain separate
With the completion of the 3rd Wraithknight, I'd got all the big/superheavy stuff done, so it was definitely time for some more group photos. These taken on a board on my kitchen floor with a towel over the radiator to give some sort of consistent backdrop... a makeshift setup but it worked. It took absolutely forever to get them all set up and photographed, then put away again. And as ever, looking back at the photos I've noticed a few of the magnetised weapons aren't level and it's really bugging me! But otherwise I think this lot look pretty cool when assembled together like this.
Honestly blown away by the last few pages I've caught up with. Your collection photos are tremendous and it's something I'd like to aspire to with my own Eldar.
That’s simply stunning Bellerophon! I can only imagine how long it took to get them setup and packed away again. Are they displayed somewhere or in storage boxes?
Astonishing! What a display. This whole army is a masterpiece. I love how you've separated the whole into the Aspects, the walkers, the vehicles and the troops. Really nice. And what a collection! Diffinately deserves to be on display at all times.
Thanks all, glad you like them! I've found that getting them all out like this really does motivate me to keep going and paint some more, see just how big I can grow this collection. There's plenty on sprue still to work on, and now that I've finished all my 'big' stuff (Scorpion and Wraithknights) I'm getting a bit of an itch to add something else from Forgeworld.
The army is on permanent display across a couple of cabinets in my mancave. It used to occupy a single Detolf, but it's long since overflowed into another cabinet. I definitely agree about keeping stuff on display if you can; after putting so much time and effort into the painting it's a shame to shut it away in storage boxes.
This may just be the longest period between updates of this thread. I've largely been working on a Warlord Titan in the meantime which I think is a fair excuse, but noticing the gap between updates definitely makes me want to focus a bit more on the eldar.
Anyway, an update! I've painted up another pair of grav tanks. Up until recently the army had one Fire Prism and no Night Spinners - a travesty! I was particularly disappointed I hadn't got around to doing a Night Spinner yet. I'm not quite sure if they're a signature Biel-Tan unit or not; I know that they're supposed to be the main (only?) user of the super-heavy Void Spinner variant, so it makes sense to me that they should be rather fond of Night Spinners too. This one was actually built with the spare parts left over from my Warp Hunter, since they give you a full Fire Prism/Night Spinner sprue, and all you're missing are the crystal parts and the canopies. So, given I had a surplus of Falcons, a bit of careful shaving of a canopy so that it fit the Night Spinner turret, and it worked pretty well. I made the actual Fire Prism/Night Spinner kit into a second Fire Prism since they're a pretty iconic Eldar unit and so I felt I needed more than one.
I think I've achieved a level of gradients/contrast on these that I'm a lot happier with than the recent ones I'd painted. My earliest grav tanks were entirely hand painted, building up the highlights through about four layers to get the effect I wanted. Since I picked up an airbrush that became a lot easier, but I felt like I lacked a bit of the depth of gradient I'd achieved with the brush method. This time around I made one simple change of putting down my basecoat of Luftwaffe Camo Green over a black undercoat, so that it came out a bit darker than previously when I'd been putting it directly onto grey primer. I'll put that down to the thin nature of airbrushed layers.
With the addition of these, it takes my grav tank collection to 10 falcon hulls (3 falcons, 3 wave serpents, 2 prisms, 1 spinner and 1 warp hunter), plus the scorpion of course. Next up (and already started) is another squad of Dire Avengers.
Those are some fancy grav tanks. The airbrushed green looks wonderful. The orange on the... spinner chambers? is classic and looks great, as does the blue on the prisms.
Far out this is a really impressive collection you've built Bellerophon! Beautifully painted. I don't know how I haven't come across your P&M blog before but I've really enjoyed reading though it from the start. I've always had a soft spot for Biel-Tan and the old models and paint schemes from 3rd edition and your army really does them justice. I've been thinking of starting my own small force so your blog has come at the perfect time! I look forward to following along
Cheers guys. The spinner barrels were a few different stages of airbrushed gradients, then painting in the black frame afterwards. I'm pleased with how they came out.
zahnib wrote: Far out this is a really impressive collection you've built Bellerophon! Beautifully painted. I don't know how I haven't come across your P&M blog before but I've really enjoyed reading though it from the start. I've always had a soft spot for Biel-Tan and the old models and paint schemes from 3rd edition and your army really does them justice. I've been thinking of starting my own small force so your blog has come at the perfect time! I look forward to following along
Thanks, I'm glad you've been enjoying the blog. It's been quite a journey from that day a few years back when I placed my first bid on an ebay auction of metal aspect warriors! Like I've said a couple of times in the last few pages, progress will probably be slower from here on, just because I've got so much eldar painted already and I've got a few other projects on the go, but I think I'll always keep coming back to them and adding new units.
After saying updates would be sparse, I've been working on Eldar... which I rate as a good thing!
Another squad of Dire Avengers finished, this time 10 of them with a glaive/shield Exarch. Most of my existing DAs are fairly dark, so I decided to go lighter with these. I painted the blue, and painted the helmets all over with the pale grey blue, and was planning on painting the faceplate and plume a different colour. Probably a black faceplate and multicoloured plumes like you tend to see on the studio scheme. But then I decided I liked how it looked with just the pale grey blue basecoat across the whole headpiece, added some shading and kept them as they are. So the helmet itself got a slightly blue tinted shade, and the plume a slight purple tint. I'm pleased with how it looks. Now that these are done, that's actually all of the Dire Avengers that I currently own, that's this squad of 10 with glaive/shield, one squad of 10 with diresword, and three squads of 5 with twin shuricat exarchs. The Eldar to-do pile has been so big that it feels slightly weird to finish my backlog of a single unit type, let alone the whole collection.
This is also the first time I've taken the gallery auto adjust rather than the original image, I think for these photos it better represents the reality.
I've also painted Amallyn Shadowguide, who I picked up from ebay a little while ago. I'd always planned to get her, since she's canonically Biel-Tan so how could I not, but it was only recently when I started to consider that Blackstone Fortress might not be around much longer that I actually got around to it.
I'm still working on more Eldar at the minute, so there should be another update before too much longer - which will be the long-planned Phase 4 of the Ridiculous Seer Council.
Thanks guys. Next update - time to expand the seer council! The first three phases consisted of every generic foot seer that ever saw wide release, so the obvious place to go from here was into the skyrunners, Eldrad(s) and kitbashes. So here we have Phase 4. Consisting of:
Farseer Skyrunner
Warlock Skyrunner
Original Metal Eldrad
Original Metal Eldrad, converted to resemble the Biel-Tan farseer from the old studio army – moved the sword to the right hand, pointed downward, added a shuriken pistol to the left hand, greenstuffed sleeves, and chopped the crest off the helmet and added a hair/topknot/thing, and painted in the same colours – hence this being my only farseer that doesn’t have a mainly white helm.
Modern plastic farseer, kitbashed with harlequin pistol, a skyrunner witchblade and skyrunner helmet
Spiritseer, kitbashed with spiritseer bits on a farseer body
Warlock, kitbashed with warlock/farseer parts on a spiritseer body
I’m pleased with how they came out overall. The greenstuff work on the converted Eldrad is a bit shoddy, but I think the paintjob hides it somewhat, so I’m content. Also the original studio one has some runes painted down the white inside/’lapels’ of the cloak, which I haven’t done here – mainly because the photos weren’t clear enough on which runes they were, and I think it looks cool enough this way anyway.
And now, the full seer council (so far). I can definitely see another expansion – I’ve still got a couple of farseers on sprue, and none of the new plastic Eldrad. I could see doing some kitbashes with him, and could certainly add more skyrunners… Will the Ridiculous Seer Council project ever end? I honestly don’t know.
So what’s this about two boxes? Well, box number one was a fairly small one. I (perhaps unwisely) signed up for Warhammer+, received my voucher and saw that I had to use it this month. I had a bit of a balance sitting around anyway from when they did that “buy vouchers and we’ll give you 10% extra” scheme at the start of Covid lockdowns, so I figured I’d pick up one of the few Codex entries that I’ve been missing until now – a trio of Support Weapon platforms. Not particularly exciting, but I’m pleased to finally fill in that gap in the collection. I've already started building, and I expect they'll be one of the next things I post up here.
Box number two though, that’s a bit more interesting. So naturally, despite ordering on the same day, box number one had arrived before box two even dispatched from the warehouse. I sat around rather impatiently, and it arrived today:
Two titans! I’d been watching things go in and out of stock on Forgeworld, trying to decide on the next big project after my Warlord. I’d still like more Imperial titans, but a combination of wanting something bigger for my Biel-Tan, and some practical concerns pushed me towards the Phantom. The practical concerns being mainly that I knew I wanted to get one at some point, and that I was going to have to get myself a big new display cabinet to house my Warlord and prospective future titans. And the phantom – being tall and lanky and likely to be more dynamically posed than an imperial titan – might just dictate the dimensions that the display cabinet needs to be. So I figured I should have a Phantom built before settling on a cabinet, so the sooner the Phantom gets built, the sooner it (and my Warlord) get a place to live.
The weapons have also been in and out of stock. My initial thought was that I’d go with one pulsar and one distortion cannon. I’m not a big fan of the power glaive really, although I’m sure it makes a great canvas for a power sword type paintjob. However the pulsar has been pretty consistently out of stock, and I decided that between the two guns, if I was going to double up on anything it should be the distortion cannon. Because when it comes down to it, the pulsar is a giant laser, whereas the distortion cannon rips holes in the fabric of reality, which in my book makes it one of the coolest and most ridiculous (in a good way) weapon technologies in the setting. So double distortion cannons it is. (I'll stop before I talk myself into a Cobra too).
Meanwhile, the Revenant – I figured I’d eventually get a pair of Revenants (ideally one of each weapon loadout, if the sonic lance one ever comes back), and since the pulsar one was in stock I thought I may as well get it delivered alongside the Phantom and make it an even more excessive delivery of resin. Though I must say the Revenant came in a suprisingly small box, when compared against the red titan box for the Phantom.I also had a mild concern that a number of Eldar forgeworld options (like the Wasp and Phoenix Bomber) have disappeared recently and while I don't think they'd do away with the titans I'd hate for them to disappear without having some in my collection.
I'm not sure where I'll start work. Possibly the Revenant, but I might find the Phantom too tempting to resist for long.
For a final photo (for now) - a Phantom distortion cannon against a Warlord Belicosa Volcano Cannon:
An impressive display of psychic might. The Eldrad conversion is awesome. Really hearkens back to the model that inspired it. And titans on the way. Very exciting!
youwashock wrote: An impressive display of psychic might. The Eldrad conversion is awesome. Really hearkens back to the model that inspired it. And titans on the way. Very exciting!
Thanks - I'm glad you like the Eldrad conversion, I'd had it in mind for a while, and I'm generally pleased with how it came out. As i said in the last post though, I'm just a bit dissappointed with the quality of my greenstuffing - although I've been pretty regularly using greenstuff and milliput it's been a long time since I've actively sculpted anything on a model - it's been gap filling, making rock formations on bases and packing in magnets. I should maybe have had a bit of a practice, but never mind, it's certainly passable.
Today I've been washing and doing a first pass at trimming the Revenant. Going ffrom one titan extreme to the other - my Warlord was a massive hobby project, and it somewhat set my expectations for working on titans. But by comparison this is a tiny quantity of resin and I could see myself getting it done surprisingly quickly. I have no doubt though that the Phantom will be a much bigger project.
The seer council looks great, the conversions look cool and the whole bunch are epic. It’s the Titans I’m really looking forward to seeing develop, rapid work sorting out the Revenant too, you’ll have it done in not time
Thanks guys - I'm looking forward to seeing these finished as much as you are!
I've been washing/scrubbing the phantom pieces, and had the first pass at trimming the casting gates off and then experimenting with how the various bits fit together. What better indicator of scale than a background Warlord?
I'm now at the point where I need to pick a pose and start gluing. I find I'm not one to rush into decisions in general, and it can often result in hobby procrastination. Until I commit to building a particular pose, or gluing a particular option on, or picking a paint scheme, there's vast potential there. But the moment you commit, all those other options are killed off, and you lock yourself into a pose, a variant, a paint job. I almost need to push myself over that hurdle sometimes - yes, committing to a particular pose does kill off all those other possibilities, but a completed model is vastly better than one that's languishing unfinished. It's been particularly bad with my primaris that came from Dark Imperium, Wake the Dead and Indomitus; I've built a bunch of them but not a one has seen a paintbrush because I still haven't made my mind up on a chapter.
These will certainly have to have fairly dynamic poses. I've seen a number of Eldar titans posted online where they've been built just stood up straight with their feet side by side, and it just doesn't work for me. These are Eldar titans, they shouldn't look stiff and static.I think I'll try to build the Revenant in a running pose. The wraithknight with sword that I posted a couple of pages back was meant to be running, but I couldn't manage to make it work, there wasn't enough articulation in the joints for the pose I wanted. So instead it ended up in that sort of leap, which as it turned out was pretty cool too. But the titans have quite a bit more range in the joints and I think (from playing around with the pieces and seeing a few photos) can pull off the running pose well. So I think I'll do that for the Revenant, but just due to the sheer size of the Phantom I think I'll build it with both feet firmly planted. If it only had one foot on the ground there's potentially a lot of lever action there. Both will get bases of course - I've got a whole bunch of MDF circles and ovals in various sizes that I laser cut in anticipation a few years ago while I had access to a laser cutter. I'm sure there'll be some suitable ones to pick from. With suitable pinning to the base they should be suitably stable.
So, a running Revenant, and a Phantom, probably in mid stride with the legs fairly wide (maybe a big tactical rock - or crushed tank underfoot?). I think that would work.
Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote: The spare head would be a very cool bit of base material for a special character to be standing on. I'm excited to see you build these guys!
Just due to the size of it (it's a titan after all...) I was wondering whether it might end up being stomped on by a Cerastus knight or a warhound or something... A cool piece to have in my bits box certainly.
I think I'm probably going to build it with the guardian-style faceplate rather than the T-slit one. It just seems more craftworld to me, whereas the T-slit feels a bit more dark eldar.
Another long stretch without an update, but seeing all the eldar teases has me motivated to work on the backlog a bit more. I'd had another 10 Fire dragons primed and ready for paint for quite a while, and although I don't think they'll get new sculpts this time around, it just felt like a good idea to try to finish off my selection of metal aspects before (hopefully) some new plastic ones land. This takes me to a total of 30 painted fire dragons, which is absolutely excessive, but they were always my favourite aspect, and primarily I ended up with so many just based on the deals I found on ebay for the metal ones. The first two squads I painted up were squads of 10, which left me with 8 dragons and 2 Exarchs. I painted them all in the same scheme so that they can either be two squads of 5, or a single squad with up to 8 dragons+Exarch - if I need a full 10-strong squad one of my other squads will just have to do!
I've also got 20 guardians to do, and since the rumours are pointing to a new guardian kit I feel like I should do the ones I have before some fancy new ones turn up and put me off doing the old ones.
I painted these closer to the standard studio scheme, except with yellow face plates rather than black, and sticking with the dark bronze coloured fusion guns that I used on my other squads.
For fun, my 3 fire dragon shrines together:
I've also (after being distracted by other projects) started to make some progress on the revenant. Because I want to do it in a running pose, that means that it'll be held up on just one leg, and I want that leg to be as solid as I can make it. So I'm using JB-Weld to make absolutely sure it stays together. Since I first used it on the Warlord, I've become quite a fan of using epoxy on bigger forgeworld models anyway, even when I don't need the strength of bond, if only because you often have a bit of a gap between the two pieces and epoxy is good at filling in those small gaps even as it fixes the pieces together. The downside of course is having to wait for it to cure, which drags out the assembly process.
Anyway, this is the leg pose:
The exact amount of 'lean' on that will depend on how I glue the ankle. Again, because of balancing on one leg I wanted to have as much of the foot in contact with the ground as possible, so I've glued the foot pieces for the left leg such that both the toes and the heel are firmly on the ground, but what I didn't realise was that there wasn't as much play in the ankle as I first thought. With the legs glued as I have done, and the foot flat on the ground, it would be more of an upwards leap than a running forwards - which is irritating because I had a similar problem on the wraithknight I tried to do in a running pose, only in that case it was limited knee articulation that hindered me. My solution (assuming I stick with the run rather than leap) is to give the titan a nice big tactical rock to be launching off, so that both the toes and heel can be attached to the base, but I can achieve the pose I want. Such as in this crude illustration (feet currently blu-tac'd on):
5 minute epoxy is a great gluing material Bellerophon. It is a much stringer bond than superglue. I also pin...because accidents are known to happen to models. :(
Tactical rock or tactical rhino hull... maybe. Something suitably rusted down to neutral so you’re not fielding a smurf transport every time he’s on the table. Actually maybe not. Overwrought bases can be a bit of a draw to the eye that you don’t want. Maybe a rock is best. But hey you’ve got options on a base that size.
More progress on the Revenant. I've been a bit slow on this, to be honest I've not been hobbying much, I've had other things going on. But slow and steady, with the extra motivator of the new Eldar releases coming up. I 3d printed myself a tactical rock. and grabbed one of the 6mm MDF bases that I lasercut a while back. I've fixed the rock to the base with a couple of countersunk screws from underneath, and the titan's foot is JB-Welded to the rock, with four separate 2mm stainless steel pins. I don't want this coming apart! All the joints in the legs and main torso are also JB-Weld.
Today I decided on, and fitted, the arms and the gun bodies. These I've just pinned and superglued, that should be plenty strong enough since they're not load-bearing. The actual gun barrels are just dry-fitted into the gun bodies, and I might leave them like that. They hold in place absolutely fine, and it would make transport a lot easier if I left them detachable. (And yes, I do need to straighten them a bit).
This photo is the latest progress, with the head, back fin shoulder engines and pauldrons dry-fitted, to get a better idea of what it's going to look like. Most of those parts I'm going to paint separately, so they won't be glued on until it's finished. The idea is that it's aiming down the left arm gun, with the right arm gun pointing up with the 'flow' of the pose.
Captain Brown wrote: 5 minute epoxy is a great gluing material Bellerophon. It is a much stringer bond than superglue. I also pin...because accidents are known to happen to models. :(
I should maybe get some of the 5 minute stuff. I use original JB-Weld, which I believe is one of the strongest bonds that you're likely to get - but it does require clamping for about a day for it to fully cure. It makes the assembly process take quite a while, but I don't mind so much on things like titans, I think they benefit from really taking your time. But the quicker curing epoxies would be plenty strong enough, I'm sure, and not require clamping for quite so long.
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I've also got one copy of Eldritch Omens on the way, splitting it with somebody who fancied the chaos. I might have been tempted by more copies if it had been a little cheaper, but as it is I would only spring for more if I knew somebody else who fancied the chaos. Besides, while I want the new Rangers and Shroud Runners, they're not the main focus of my Swordwind. I would like at least a couple of the new Autarchs though!