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I was going to hold this topic for some months, probably next year, but them i had an insight.

It became obvious to me that a blog is not just a place to show the progress of my army and what neat new things i got. It's a place to share my experiences with the hobby, so i decided to do as i did before and in sharing those experiences sort of becoming a voice for my own community. But experience shows me a disclaimer is needed before:

Disclaimer wrote:I'm a gamer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A beautiful and amazing city with i love from the deep of my heart in a country i'm proud to live on, even with all the problems it might have. In this topic i'll share my experiences with the hobby. This includes the difficult of being a gamer in a small country where miniature gaming is a very small and expensive hobby. I think it's very important to tell that i'm not doing so for donations, gifts or any other gain. I also don't want to show myself as a victim, as a poor child in need of help or any of that, nor i want to portrait my country and it's people, including other hobbyists, as so. We are just people trying to begin in a hobby that never really got ground here.

I ask that if any of you feel the need to make any donation, donate to UNICEF or other charity organizations. There are many people in my country, in your country and in all the world, including even other hobbyists, that need help and donations much more than me.

Sorry for making you read this but i found it to be necessary so i would not feel guilty as my posts can be unintentionally interpreted in another way.

First i'll talk about how i got into this hobby and my experiences with it even before i began to play

I'm have about 10 years of experience with RPGs (and i'm only 23) but until last year i didn't use what people would call miniatures. We never used anything to mark the characters on a grid or table for most of my years of gaming. But we played mostly AD&D and World of Darkness at the time, those were not really needed. When the 3rd Edition of D&D came we need something to mark the characters but first we used the most ridiculous thing we could get our hands own. Player characters could be chess pieces or even d6 (The only dice that is produced locally here in Brazil, so it's cheap and we have lots of them) and maybe that Cell phone could be a dragon and and eraser a Centaur. It did the trick and most of my group never wanted anything different, the most i saw was somebody cutting pieces of a Box into the shape of a square and writing the name of what it represent on top.

But i do have my hidden "artistic" side and i had the idea of making some paper minis. This is how it began... First they were ugly stand up minis that had pieces of boxes glued to them in a vain attempt to make them not fly with the weakest gust of wind. This was so long ago i don't even have pictures of them. Next came some better looking minis with 3 sides, which you can see bellow:



Finally i moved to minis that went more and more complex until they looked like this:



What was the next step? Plastic and metal minis of course! I bought some REALLY OLD skeletons and zombies from a guy i met on a social network that imports them and sells (As a side note: There are basically no real distributors here in Brazil. This happens because of both toys regulation and custom taxes make that impractical.). I bought some Acrilex brand craft paints from a local craft store (the closest hobby store is 20km, and both a train and subway ride, away, and remember i live in one of the largest cities in my country), some local Condor synthetic brushes and this was the result:


Notice they didn't came with bases, so i used 5 centavos coins.

Some zombies and DDM repaints after that i really enjoyed painting. Not just because my RPG table was prettier, but because i enjoyed painting for painting sack, it was a path to my occult artistic persona that i felt i had never fully explored, even with all my writing and my singing lessons. I was hooked up.

But what about wargames? Well... i always had this desire to try them but i felt they were ver expensive and i would not be able to find other players close enough to me. I always loved strategy video games, and if it's more complex, it's better. I'm a long time fan of computer games like the Total War and Civilization series and the not so famous games by Paradox Entertainment like Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis. Some day i discovered people actually played games like these here in Brazil and being already in love with miniature painting i had to try. I discovered that a national webstore had tried being GW's representative in Brazil but ultimately failed. Their site still had some minis, mostly LoTR material for a relatively cheap "We bought too much of those and need to get rid of those" prices, so i bought lots of them, with some GW paints (mostly undesired colors they still had in stock). Vallejo paints were my first international buy (and a relatively quick and uneventful one, arriving just 1 month after i bought. Really, this is a quick and uneventful shipping when we are speaking about Brazilian postal service) and the core of my new improved painting collection. Things began to improve but i soon discovered that most people here in Rio played WH40k, WH Fantasy or WW2 Historical Games so i would never use my LoTR minis outside my RPG games. But still they helped evolve my painting skill a lot, as i'll show bellow with some examples of my work from beginning until the last mini i had painted when i posted this (Please noticed that dates are in brazilian standard DD/MM/YY:



Noticed my last mini was painted on August. That's because as my painting skills improved i became more and more annoyed with the brushes i had and decided not to paint until i got new brushes. After a lot of trying and failing i bought them about one month latter, they were shipped 15/09 and still have not arrived, so i still have not resumed painting.

While that i read all i could about Warhammer 40k fluff and got to love the setting. I chosen the eldar as my first army and began work on my custom craftworld. I would begin buying the minis when my the shipments from UK i had bought with tools and the corebooks arrived. This would be so because of the way the Brazilian custom houses works, they don't have the personnel to tax everything as the law says so they basically pick based in lots of factors. The laws changed to accommodate to that and now taxes are absurdly high but being taxed or not is like a dice roll, with some elements influencing it, having many shipments arrive at the customs at the same time is one of those, so if i buy more stuff before the stuff i bought before arrives i have a much larger risk of having to pay about 60-70% of the value of the product plus shipment in taxes.

BTW, it's mid September and none of those shipments arrived, the earliest (the corebooks) with the record time of 2 months and still not there. As those shipments are not tracked (Not worth paying for it) i have no idea if some of those are going to arrive at all. As the holiday season approaches i don't think buying minis is worth it because new shipments will probably arrive only february and march next year (due to the rise on the number of shipments at the holiday season).

Now i finish the this post with the current situation. With my new paints, my tools, my green stuff and even the rulebooks still not in my hands and with the fluff complete (will translate it to english and post after this post, probably it's going to end being appended) i decided to buy some epoxy putty (similar to grey stuff from what i hear) that we have at construction stores here in Brazil and try to learn some sculping. When i finish my first work (an humble mushroom, for the maiden world jungles of my army base) i'll probably post here. I still got to visit the place where carioca (that's how people from Rio are called) play WH40k to get to know the people in person and take a look at the games (BTW, it's a 32km trip to get there). I plan on doing it this saturday.

Hope people liked this post, and the next one comes soon. Please comment and live your opinions. I specially would like to hear about the experiences from other players in Latin America and on countries in development.

Yirr-Khalian Craftworld



Guardians of the exodite people, the Eldar of Craftworld Yirr-Khalian wander in the Ultima Segmentum defending the population of the Maiden Worlds against external attacks. They are famous for employing a mix of heavily fortified positions and lighting fast strikes to stop the imperials and the tau from expanding to those worlds.

The objectives of the Craftworld are directly influenced by a very uncommon believe between other eldar that is very strong amount the Yirr-Khalian. Most Eldar of the craftworld believe that Asuryan, the Phoenix King and leader of the dead Eldar pantheon, had his body slayed by Slaanesh, but his soul survived and lies asleep divided into the Infinity Circuits of all the craftworlds. His dormant soul recovering his energies through the spirits of the dead eldar to one day rebirth as Ynnead, god of the dead, and lead the Eldar to the Ranna Dandra, the last battle of the Eldar race where Slaanesh will be destroyed once and for all and the Eldar finally redemeed.

This heretical believe holds that the Eldar race shall fight against Slaanesh to death and upon dying they shall be joined to the Infinity Circuit to help Asuryan rise and defeat Slaanesh.

The Maiden Worlds and their exodite population, formed by eldar that isolated themselves from the declining race before their fall are there by important to the Yirr-Khalian for two reasons. First, their worlds have their own versions of the Inifinity Circuits, the Worlds Spirits, where the souls of dead exodites go. Those Spirit Worlds have a piece of Asuryan's soul as the Infinity Circuits do and each exodite spirit on the Worlds Spirit also makes Ynnead's rise grows near. Second, it's inhabitants are seem by the Yirr-Khalian as equally skilled warriors that should fight for Asuryan as all the Craftworld Eldar do. The Yirr-Khalian try to give them their own knowledge and technology to the exodites and also try to integrate them in the Eldar society at large. They believe that by doing this they are preparing the Exodites to be better fighters at the coming Rhana Dandra.

Recently the small population of the Craftworld had a rise after the events of the Battle of Shaladar, when a massive army of the craftworld tried to stop the 3rd Company of the Genesis Chapter of the Space Marines to conclude an Exterminatus order given by the inquisition because of heresy amount the human colonies of the planet. The Eldar troops were ultimately defeated but bought time for a great number of exodites from the world to evacuate to the craftworld, caring part of the Spirit Stones from the World Spirit with them. The survivors of Shaladar exodite population now live in the craftworld, with all the rights of the other craftworlders, but they still have a rather exotic culture if compared to the Craftworld eldar.

The Yirr-Khalian Army

The Yirr-Khalian are known for appearing amount the exodites and sharing with the advanced technology and military tactics, turning the exodites in more formidable foes against colonizing forces. Many times rangers and other followers of the Path of The Outcast stay at the Maiden Worlds amount the population. Some exodites also serve amount the Yirr-Khalian military as a form of advanced military study. The vision of a mixed force of Craftworlders and Exodites is usually unique to the Yirr-Khalian forces, as most Craftworlds prefer to have the exodites isolated in their worlds.

The Craftworld traditionally had a small population and because of that the use of tanks and other heavy combat vehicles was widespread. The Eldar taboo that considers Wraithguards and Wraithlords to be necromancy has so far being influenced by their Iyanden allies to adopt a large number of those creatures to compensate for their low population, the Craftworld has however used the in smaller quantities in the past. While the infantry and the Aspect Shrines were never really abandoned until very recently it was hard to field many of them.

With the recent arrival of the Shaladar exiles, the population of the Craftworld had a sudden rise on the number of Infantry, lighter vehicles and even aspect warriors. This has created a big change on the ways the Yirr-Khalian fight.

Exodites from other Maiden Worlds usually limit themselves to serve as Guardians. The less experienced as Defenders and the Veterans as Storm Guardians. Some nobles and other kinds of mounted warriors are instead recruited into the Jetbikes or Vyper squadrons, forming the famous Dragon Riders, responsible for the vanguard of many lighting attacks the Craftworlds launches.

The Craftworlders and Shaladar exiles prefer to serve as elite soldiers in the Aspect Shrines. The exiles make the majority on the Striking Scorpions and Shining Spears shrines, but are represented in all of them. Some of them prefer to follow the tradition of the Craftworld and ride heavy vehicles into battle, side by side with their fellow craftworlders.

Relations With Other Craftworlds

For now i'm just putting the ones i see the Craftworld as having more active relations

Iyanden - Many times valuable allies, they are the Craftworld with the best relations with the Yirr-Khalian
Biel-Tan - Rivals today, allies tomorrow. They are outraged by the Yirr-Khalian tradition of breaking with exodite isolationism. Many Yirr-Khalian eldar think that they prefer to protect the Maiden Worlds and their resources instead of the exodite population per se and the World Spirit. But in the end they are one of the only Craftworlds that cares to protect the exodites, so they have seen themselves siding with the Yirr-Khalian more than they fought against each other.

Just would like to tell that Durepoxi (the epoxi putty they sell here in Brazil) is better than i imagined, i'll take some photos tomorrow of my first work on it. It REALLY SUCKS, but for a first work i think it's fine.

Comic Book Guy says: "Ugliest sculpt ever"



That was supposed to be an exodite stone, connected to the Maiden World's World Spirit. I call it a utterly failed sculpt. Back to doing mushrooms i think.

It has been a long time but i'm back.

Look at what has just arrived after all those months:


Yes! My brushes! And i'm now back to painting. I have became rust after 6 months but i hope that i'll have some minis to post there soon. Also, i have sorted my problem with shipment and i think next month i'll have my first Eldar minis coming.

No Eldar yet, but i just want to show you guys some of my last LoTR models so you guys know that the army is coming.

Warrior of Rohan


PS: Sorry for the text in portuguese, it's nothing really important. Also, the coin in the first photo is because i was showing this to people that never knew about minis before, so i wanted to give a sense of scale.

Uruk-Hai