Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hello all,

Well I've been away from my blog for a bit, though not so much from the hobby. I have an end goal in sight and I need your help. I realize that I have accumulated around 25,000 points of eldar army at this point, and I'm not satisfied. I'm still catching up on painting all of it, but as I troll ebay for good deals and pick up this and that, I have needed some kind of an objective at the end of the road. Last night it came to me. I'm shooting for that crazy goal of an entire craftworlds army. I aim to have the entire lot properly painted, based, and hopefully my quality will improve as the project goes. As I run various battles I would like to even build story lines and details about the various characters that pop up in my army. I need your help in determining what a true full army turnout of an entire craftworld would be. Having been in the warp for 10,000 years or so, I wouldn't imagine that they would have an unreachable number of units.

As things progress I will work up a targeted roster, and check off all that I have obtained. I would love your input on what else should be added or tweaked. Is 120 guardians enough, or should it be closer to 300? How many titans, air force load out? You can think it, I will try and make it happen.

I will just be attaching this to the started blog for now. List to begin as the evening goes.

Try this:


And then be sure to use a gloss varnish on top of the paint to make it extra shiney. Hope this helps.

Thanks, exactly what I needed, will update as it comes along.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
First attempts at the gems on my old wraithlord are going pretty well, a couple more swipes and I think they may be shiny, have to go get a glossy clear coat to finish them up. Additional thoughts though are I was hoping to put a slight skull motif on that big black head of his. I've seen a couple of them on the new wraithlords that are gorgeous, but mine has all the old lumpy bits. Thinking I'm either going to grind them all off now that I've got it painted. (doh) Or looking for tips on painting in skulls. Option three I was thinking of was mounting a skull on the front that I fit to the head of the wraithlord. Something similar in shape to Maugan Ra's shoulder pads. Maybe a touch bigger. Thoughts anyone?

Pics of shiny gems tommorow maybe.

Well, just dug all of my old eldar out and laid them on the table. Some of them have not survived the past decade well, but that's okay since I'm going to rebuild, repaint, and customize a lot of them. Looking back at my painting skills at the time, wow they are rough. This should be a fun project to bring the back and to start playing with them here in Seattle. Thanks much for all those that show an interest and who help me along the way with suggestions.

So, I have started with the guardians for the stripping and repainting, and I had a lot of fun with stripping. I used a little jar of denatured spirits to strip them down, didn't take much more then five minutes of soaking. I had three in at a time and just rotated them, the first pull I wiped them with a cloth which removed large chunks of paint at a go, then came back with a poker bit to get into the pockets. The model then went back in the jar and I pulled the next. After second dip I hit them with a toothbrush, and the pokey bit again. Then a third just to clean the last bits out and voila. Took all of an hour and a half to do all of them, since I was trying to finish my wraithlord at the same time. I'll have pictures of him tomorrow after he dries and gets varnished. Oh side note for those who use denatured alcohol, it eats through most super glue, which I wanted, but could be awkward if you don't plan on it. However the plastic itself is totally unharmed.

Hmmm, curious, I'm painting up my guardian squad again and looking at the weapons they had, some of them just didn't belong, and the current rule book. I have many of the las guns they used to have, but I don't see any current eldar rules for them. Are they the lasblasters the swooping hawks have, or are they something else? I don't have enough shuriken catapults laying around that I can cover all of them. C&C always appreciated.

First of the completed models! a wraithlord I took apart and bent and repositioned and played with, then tried him out for my new altansar army. As you can see from earlier in the thread, I was trying to work on making my gems shiny, think I got it a bit, but something I can work on, and should have plenty of time to with Eldar. I would of course love to hear comments and constructive criticism, it's the only way I will grow. I think this guy is done, maybe one more coat of varnish, I can never stop tinkering.

Thanks much.

pray tell, what's in the jar?

Denatured alcohol. Find it at any hardware store, a liter for around 7 dollars I think. As I've been continuing to strip my old army, I've found with the highly detailed metal figures that either a heavy plastic brush or a brass brush. Also at the hardware store for about 1.50. I've stripped about twenty models with the 3 oz in the jar there. Hope that answers your question.

Well I've gotten a little carried away in my stripping and repainting my army, thus the break in the posting. I stripped down a bunch of guardians, as well a pair of modern ones I picked up, and some of my really old guys, missing one of those, but I'm sure he will turn up. You can also see some naked warp spiders in the background, a jetbike, a war walker, and a squad of rangers. They all need more of the detail work done, and cleanup from the two major colors, but should be coming along.

Oooh. Retro-Eldar.

Looking forward to seeing how those progress for the sake of nostalgia!

Well no pics for the moment, though there will be some this weekend. I just wanted to share the things I have learned lately with my modeling. There is too much of a good thing!

Having a coffee while modeling: While a little caffeine helps to focus the mind and wake you up on a sunday morning. Or perhaps make you a little quicker in the morning so you can throw another layer on that big gun. Multiple cups of coffee makes you vibrate so much, my eldar looked like they were wearing plaid. Occasionally I would get lucky and both hands would vibrate equally so the painting went well.

Having an adult beverage: While it works great to soothe the nerves of the day, trying to keep up with my German wife I found that the paint job I thought was great last night, turned out to to need a new dip in the denatured alcohol instead. Whoops.

Models: Yes there is such a thing as too many models. I've found that working on fifteen of the same models at the same time. I just can't go fast enough, and I don't see enough progress per model that I've slowed down. Way down. From now on, no more then four models I have found works well for me. Any character should have my undivided attention from now on. It's just better that way.

Now if I can keep up to my schedule I'll have my first round of guardians, an HQ, and some rangers that I can ad to my wraithlord so I can go have a game this weekend. Woo Hoo!

Well, finally got some time to work on the minis. If work, a wife and visiting family didn't keep getting in the way I'd have all the time in the world to work on these, but that whole life thing keeps getting in the way. I'm pretty happy with the guardians though, ready to put my little force on a battlefield. The Farseer is still underway.

Well had my first blooding of my Altansar army. Went down to the local game shop and had a team battle with a space marine VS space marine and Necrons. That whole we'll be back thing is annoying. Turned out to be a draw. Learned lots, and I'm excited to get out there again next week same time and play again. Most useful weapon: Fire Prism! Least useful Guardian squad with a scatter laser? (when they moved towards an objective he couldn't fire, and when he fired me mostly missed. Shuriken cannon for me I Think.

I want to reward myself by painting up the fire prism to match the army, but I'm going to be a good Llama and finish the farseer first.

More characters coming along. I give you my farseer Caelis Sol. I didn't like all the ten thousand stones on his helmet so I culled most of them in the name of simplicity. Had some fun with using metallic paints on his robe. Black base, copper over the top, silver to highlight and gold to do the runes and such. Here he is just before I varnish him, then I'll ad basing and he's ready to lead my armies into battle. Mwah ha hah.

Also finished touching up the rangers by shining their gems and giving them some varnish to preserve them. Next task is either going to be my warp spiders I think. Although I'm just shy of fielding a squad in the current codex. Hmm, have to pick up a few more, and I would love a chance to carve up the exarch and tweak his position.

Continuing for this week I wanted to work on my striking scorpion squad to ad more close combat in tomorrows game. While I've got them sprayed up I got distracted working on the exarch and it is his pics that I'm tossing in today. I started with the standard guy and heat bent him a bit as well as taking some of the extra stuff I thought unnecessary. I'm going to give his off hand a small chain dagger type deal. In my mind I imagine the striking scorpions as a cross between ninjas and the old classical sword duelists. Continuing with that thought they usually had a rapier and a dagger for countering with. So my exarch I plan on giving him a main gauche. I didn't like the smaller chain sword I had so I'm going to have to just make the second weapon up from other bits. Woo hooo. Probably won't be ready for my thursday game, but ah well.

I'm still thinking of bending him at the waist a bit, give him more action. That might take a bit more heat though..... Hmmm.

A little more work done on the scorpion exarch. I've had my first two uses of green stuff, the first was a wonderfully epic failure of my sculpting skills. His main gauche ended up looking like it had a flopping pancake on one end and a booger on the other. Take two has come out a bit better though. I'm also doing a bit of painting on my first three jet bikes, though I had to put away the painting station as we have friends spending the night.

So much time for a little progress. I'm at the painting stage for my SS exarch and a couple of his buddies. Also managed to whip out four of my jetbikes. Here they are below. I like how the jewels are coming along. In the background of one of the pictures you may see the severed arms of the bike riders. They are not as far along as their cool rides. Funny how that works.

Well there have been quite a few developments of late. Here we have my army as it stands now. Large portions of it stripped, some primed, some based, some old and some in the proper scheme. I've been doing a lot of experimenting as I've gone, working on my painting skills, and of late flocking skills. I initially wanted to base all my minis in teak dust as if they were on a desert. (working with boats I have an unlimited supply.) However, I came upon and snagged the idea for the pathfinders here and at least for them, I'm going to try and go with it.

Looks really good so far. Keep up the good work.

Another fun development is my wife has taken a liking to painting minis. Yay spousal support. So, here is her first project, a pathfinder who if they ever come out for rules for him would likely be Hoec. The...think phoenix lord of the pathfinders. To help support her new liking and hopefully to turn this into an urge for an army of her own. I've cleaned off all my harlequins and given her free reign.

(Side note, while cleaning the harlequins I found the body of a jet bike rider left in the denatured alcohol for about a month. No ill effects. He's a touch paler gray then the others, but not soft, and the remaining paint fell off. Neat.)

Well thank you for being the first non me poster Ninja, I appreciate that someone else out there is reading my blog too. Figured at this point I was just entertaining myself. Looking forward to some more good updates soon, Fire dragons and the finish of the striking scorpions.

Some really old models in your collection! Nice too see them getting a fresh coat of paint and marching off to battle again.

Keep it up!

Cain

While I've taken some pictures, I realized I have not posted anything in a bit. Well all kinds of ADHD it seems. I've been working on the scorpion exarch a little bit, but I started playing with some fire dragons, a warp spider, some more fire dragons. You know the deal. Well I'm actually reigned myself in a little and I'm focusing a little bit. I've got a good picture of a handful of my dragons in various stages and attempts at a molten look similar to how many do the avatar. I tried with a red base and then washing in black to slowly darken it, and it looked alright, but just not there. I then tried one that was white just primed and painted from white out towards the black in layers. I kind of like this one, but I thought I would try again from the other direction. This is the one I think I'm going to set on, though I think I will paint the molten look a little bit farther out and with more colors, as well as making the hot spots for the flames on their masks and guns.

Oh, the wife is painting the solitaire for the harlequins at the moment. Although there is no character in the game for him at the moment, I've been using him as a troupe master.

Cool fire dragon scheme, going to try doing my next lot like that now.

And that solitare model is awesome!

These old Eldar are sweet. I have a soft spot for retro models. That paint idea for your Fire Dragons is looking really awesome. Love your creativity. Keep it up!

Update on the fire dragons here, and I'm working on the warp spiders now. For this squad of dragons I'm finally happy, from your average table top distance the molten look holds up and they look pretty sweet. Just finished up the gems and varnish work. Put a basic coat of brown on the bases. This is probably what I will do from now on as I plan out how I'm going to base all my models. I'm thinking about a bit of melted plastic onto the bases then cover them with the abundant teak dust I have. Gives the desert look a bit more depth. We shall see.

Another update from the time off paintathon. Warp spiders are coming along. The references that I have found to the warp spider phoenix lord has had him in gold armor, so I wanted to take some of that into the general warp spider soldiers. At one point I was working on purple heads and that just looked strange. So far I'm happy with the way the gold is blending in over the red base, although what you see there is four coats of the gold. It has to be watered down quite a bit to make a smooth coat, but it's well worth it to keep it looking smooth. I'm not sure where on here I saw the blue power blades and blue webber chambers, but totally adopted that Idea. I may be changing over the fangs on the sides of their helmets to match up with the jumping spiders I was looking at on youtube.

In between while those have been drying I have started up some of the first Dire Avengers I'm for the next painted squad. Woo hoo!

Here are the starting works on the dire avengers. Going with a black base, then do a red and blue striped hair. The guns similar to how I did the guardians earlier. Then I'll come back over the armor plates and put a couple different layers of blue getting lighter as it comes to the upper areas.

More updates from the paintathon week. The warp spiders are nearing completion, just have to jewel them up, one last pass over to touch up any bleed over spots, then varnish and base them. The Dire avengers are coming along nicely. Washed them with a light blue and a darker blue. Picked out their armor pads a bit and got their heads and hair set up. A bit more detail work to do, but they are coming along. While waiting for all of these to dry I am rewarding myself with a fun conversion and heavy unit. Another Wraithlord! This is an older model even then my other one and will have either a scythe or a big ax (counts as wraithsword) Then a magnetic pod for changing out a shoulder weapon, though likely running with a bright lance. So here is the first pic of it status quo.