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Hi!

I've been slowly collecting and painting a force of raiding Dark Eldar for a campaign that we're having with my friends. The idea is to get 500 points more troops painted on every step. Now I'm expanding the army for 1000 points and the games are supposed to played before the end of November.

The initial army consisted (due budgetary issues) of some old models that I got from my friend combined with a box of warriors and some harlequins that I was painting for my eldar army to one tournament.

My current leader 'Count Calamarai' (Duke Sliscus rules) is made by switching the arms from the Drazhar model. Easy but effective conversion:


I'm about to do a better model for him later from the Dark elf special character Lokhir Fellheart (the corsair guy with the squid mask). This guy probably will get to serve as his personal bodyguard as a Dracon of Kabalite trueborn squad.

Other older models that I got from my friend were these wyches:


They are kinda cheesy models, but still my favourites from the old dark eldar models along with the incubi. I painted them quite quickly as they most probably wont see too much games outside of the campaign.

The first new models for this project were these warriors:


The new models are absolutely great. So much detail and very pleasant to put together.

And with these harlequins, the initial 500 points was complete:


The Shadowseer wasn't actually included in the 500 points, but it's nice model so worth to include. Otherwise I wasn't too enjoyed by the harlequins. I think I made a bad choice with the colours and the weapon swaps to kisses was horrible task(I had 6 models out of 15 with fusion pistols due to buying half of them used). I still have 8 of them undercoated, maybe I'll try a different scheme for them.

So that was my initial 500 point army. I actually managed to win both of my first round games which was bit surprising as I faced always fearsome imperial guard and an eldar army backed up with 2 war walkers and 6 jetbikes (that this army doesn't catch too well). In both games Sliscus made the heavy lifting and the rest of the army acted as a bait and harrasment.

Now as I said, we are about to pay the second round after hiatus caused by the summer. Count Calamarai made a pact with certain Hellion Baron and is about to get some help from his gang. I got first 5 helions ready today:



The models are my favourites out of the new dark eldar range and were again really enjoyable to put together and paint. Only slight minus was that the small rips of their suit that reveal the skin are bit annoying to paint. I tested out some paint chipping weathering for the skyboards and I think it turned out ok. The boards were also dusted with weathering powders to get the desert feeling to them.

Here's a shot of the whole group (bar harlequins) at the moment:

http://jamo.1g.fi/eldar/dark+eldar/kaikki.JPG
(It's bigger picture so hence the link)

Next in line is to get two more boxes of hellions to make 5 more hellions, a helliarch with stunclaw, the Baron and 3 beastmasters. For the beasts I'm going to delve into my box of old unused models. I'm going to put pics here as I get the models done and maybe even some battle reports when we get to play the games of this round.

Comments and ideas for Dark eldar piratical raiders are of course appreciated.

Hi, I bought and painted second box of Hellions. From these I also made the Helliarch with stunclaw and the Baron.





I've got plans to get the army done for a tournament after christmas. It got a good start, but I don't know if I'm able to keep this pace as I'm going to start in a new job next week. Of course I can always fill the points with some razorwings if I'm not getting the needed amount otherwise.

Really like the color theme of the basic warriors! Also, the harlequins look superb, great stuff!!

Looks great; i was looking at doing a black/white base for DE soon

I love your combination of orange and grey! Really nicely done miniatures, mate, well done

I like the purple effect on your Drazhar conversion's whip - it's small but a nice piece of work. The bone effect you've done is also really nice with that orange.

Are you calling your general Count Calamarai because he'll be wearing a squid mask?

I would like you to keep us updated on that campaign you're playing - would love to see some pictures of these guys in action!

Thanks for the response!

The name Calamarai indeed comes from the squid mask. I'm inspired mostly by the emblem of House Greyjoy in the Game of Thrones board game: It helps that the Dark elf corsair box comes with really nice and suitable banner top. I've been thinking about giving the 'current' Calamarai second whip instead of the blast pistol when he relegates to Dracon duty, so that he would have two tentacles. Don't know what it would look like though, probably would need more dynamic posture. I've also been thinking about making the bodyguard to have eight members as the 'Eight tentacles of the Calamarai'. It would be cool and would give me a nice unit to make some interesting and characterful conversions.

I'll update you with the campaign results when we play the next round. I can give you bit of the background.

"Invasion of Sector 53"

The sector 53 is a system on the edges of the Imperial realm. It's main population is on the planet Attica, which is harsh planet, mainly focused on mining some rare minerals. It's strategic value is low so during the milleniums after the great crusade it was mostly forgotten. The people on Attica still traded with the nearby systems, but the imperial power had lost most of its value here. The people minded their own business and the Imperium didn't have too much interest in them.

Unknown to the people in Attica the planet had a greater role in the universe. Before the human settlement the Eldar had binded a powerful chaos daemon inside the planet. There hadn't been too many problems before, but during recent years the Eldar rangers that were watching the planet had noticed some anomaly in the warp around the planet. The humans had "dug too deep" in search of the minerals and this had caused some the bindings of the daemon to weaken. These anomalies had also been noticed in the Ordo Malleus. Suddenly the previously uninteresting backwater world in the edges of space became the interest of many parties.

Our campaign has five armies:

My Dark Eldar raiding force of Count Calamarai who was led to the planet by mystic harlequins. They gave the route hoping that the Dark eldar would kill all humans and hence end their dangerous digging on the planet.

Ordo Malleus Inquisition is led by Inquisitor Velsquez and they are inspecting the strange warp fields. Later on they'll notice that something big is happening, and that is when the Grey knights will be giving the purgation task on planet. Initially the army is just inquisition and henchmen.

Eldar army trying to stabilize the binding field. The initial army consists of a scouting force led by Farseer 'Idon 'tkno Wthename'.

The local planetary defence force led by the stout Colonel Kraken.

And on initial stage there were some Dark Angels that were searching for some Fallen on the system. They got pummeled quite badly by the local pdf and the eldar so their presence is uncertain. There are rumours though that something quite else is approaching the system. The warp anomalies have alerted some raiding Chaos space marines. (In other words our dark angel player is having troubles with time and is changing to his already painted Word bearers).

In initial round each played two games and I was the only one to win both of the games. I played against the Eldar and the imperial guard. both games were won mostly by Calamarai getting to close combat. He's a beast.

I painted a new unit. Some scorges:



Not a perfect paintjob, the wings were tricky to paint. I'll have to glaze them a bit.

Really loving the paint job

very cool paint job

Looks great ! Love it

Awesome aweome paint scheme you got going there for your DE raiders. Though Im probably quite partial to bone/black type schemes

Still, it's very nice and the orange really compliments it. I also like you Baron Sathonyx conversion. How'd you get the cape?

Above all, a very good job.

I really like the colors that you chose.

Wow, thanks. It's nice to hear that I've made the right decisions on colours.

@Ronin:

The Baron's cloak is from the High elf wizard kit. I saw someone else (I think Speedfreak in Warseer) had used the same bit and I had one laying in my bitz box. It's quite perfect fit, I only had to shave the vents on his back.

Next on list is the first raider that I assembled yesterday. It might not be as annoying to paint as I thought before. Only problem is that the top deck over the rear exhausts is open to see through and the exhausts look impossible to paint after assembly. Something that I should keep in mind for further raiders.

I agree with above posts about the colors. Great choice, and looks superb. You're not helping me refrain from starting a DE army. I've got too much on the go as it is...

I have a drive going on, but unfortunately I ran out of undercoat spray. To be continued tomorrow.

Really nice paint scheme. It's interesting to see some creativity on a tight budget.

And it's giving me a few ideas for my upcoming DE army. Not to say that I'm following your scheme.

We have record setting rains in Helsinki so this project is also continuing. I bought a battle force sometime ago, but the painting has been bit slogging. Now I finally got first part of it done, the Reavers. Also finished is the raider from the past pics. Hopefully soon second raider, 10 wyches and some warriors and trueborn will follow.




The bikers are so cool that I've been thinking about getting a properly big unit of them. 6-10 should be enough

Really like the colour scheme. This army looks great now and I'm sure it will look even better completed.

I really like your muted white colour and the soft black with contrasting orange.

jamopower wrote:The Baron's cloak is from the High elf wizard kit. I saw someone else (I think Speedfreak in Warseer) had used the same bit and I had one laying in my bitz box. It's quite perfect fit, I only had to shave the vents on his back.

I think he turned out great!
(my cloak is actually put on inside out)



And the battle damage looks great too!

Fantastic paint jobs on these! Well done!

Fantastic colour scheme and painting! Subbed.

WOAH!! These are some amazing Dark Eldar. Cant wait to see more. I like the use of hellglaives on the splinter racks instead of using rifles

sub'd beautiful stuff, I am envious.

Completely awesome! What a fresh and original scheme!

jamopower wrote:

Love the colros and the weathering.

Wow, thanks for the feedback. I feel flattered. This gives motivation to get more models done. I have 20 infantrymen undercoated, so hopefully they'll be done soon enough.

Hi. First let me say just how much I Loved seeing your work! Your painting and colour scheme are fantastic! Second, let me just state that Duke Sliscus is a model I have also recently made and am currently fielding in my list. I have placed him with my Kabalite Trueborns, ( Who were equipted with 2X Splinter cannons 2X Blasters, 2X Shredders, 3X Shard Carbines and a Dracon). Extremely Effective! His squad murdered a tyranid Mawlok(Spelling?) yesterday with ease.I don't know, have you also had good luck with him?

Nicve and clean looking, great stuff.

Nice to hear that this kind of retinue has been effective as I'm making similar squad. In the campaign games he has just given the poison bonus to a 10 man warrior squad, which has been quite effective. The trueborn are really nice unit with all the options that give the opportunity to make it a really characterful unit. (Though almost always the only option that is seen is the option to have four blasters in the squad...) I've built two models with splinter cannons, two with shardcarbines and two with pistol, ccw and a holstered splinter rifle (to field them either ways). I'll add up a dracon with agonizer at some point, but probably will use it only in bigger games as it makes the squad bit too expensive for my taste.



Oh and I promised to tell about our campaign games. Unfortunately I don't have any photos as the fuse of the club room in my building was burnt up and the lighting wasn't really suitable for photographing miniatures. We played the 1000 point round games in the end of November. Even though the plan and goal with this campaign was to get our armies painted, only two of six got 1000 points ready for the day. Bit of a bummer, but didn't effect our gaming.

I had in my army the Duke and the Baron leading an army of 10 warriors with splinter cannon and blaster, 6 wyches with shardnet, grenades and hekatrix with venom blade in raider, 9 hellions with helliarch armed with stunclaw, 5 scourges with a heat lance and a haywire launcher and six harlequins with kisses and a shadowseer. We have an experience system in our campaign for the leader and the "mvp unit" of each game. From the first round games my leader 'Count Calamarai' learned the skill 'stealth', the wyches got furious charge and the warriors became fearless.

I don''t remember exactly how the games went. Just that I won all of my games . We played random scenarios from the battle missions book so that the we rolled from the scenarios of the army that had more wins under their belt. I got to play all of the dark eldar scenarios as we played one extra game that we didn't count for the campaign as we had some extra time.

First game was against necrons. My opponent had overlord with scythe and the phareon, destroyer lord with scythe, 4 wraiths, 5 warriors with solar pulse cryptek, big unit of warriors, 2 heayvy destroyers, a tomb spyder and some scarabs. Game was bit of a stale mate, both didn't want to get charged,. The turning point was when first my wyches failed the assault to scarabs with bad fleet roll and the on return the scarabs failed their charge with snake eyes to difficult terrain (they tried to combo charge some further away units). I sacrificed my hellions to the wraiths and in the end shot everything to pieces except the destoyer lord. Count Calamarai continued his streak by killing the third enemy leader in as many games. Mvp were the wyches which got preferred enemy. Yay.

Second game was against deathwing. 15 terminators, Belial and a squad of ravenwing bikers. Nice. First time I was happy that the terminators were mostly assault variety and also that he had ran out of points and just had one cyclone missile launcher. The game went mostly so that the temrinators tried to get to me through big ruins and I shot everything I could to them. My superior mobility (after I killed the bikes) meant that the game wasn't too hard for me. The shooty terminator squad was really frightening, they killed almost 20 dark eldar in the game. Storm bolters are really somthing to be afraid of when you play with dark eldar. I think I never want to face grey knights...
Highlight of the game was when the Count sacrificed himself against full squad of assault terminators. He killed three of them before they got through his shadowfield. Again wyches were the mvp (they killed half of the terminators) and now got feel no pain. That squad is bounf to be upgraded to full squad of ten for the next campaign round. Count got enough experience to get two upgrades, from which I rolled +1 to WS and second skill for which I chose Stubborn.

In other games the eldar were beaten up by Grey knights and the Imperial guard, The Deathwing are facing the grey knights later and in a battle between the Imperial guard and the Necron threat the Necron were victorious. Next round with 1500 point armies should be sometime in the early year 2012. Probably in the beginning half of February. I'll try to take some in action photos then.

Some new stuff!

I bought some new brushes (Raphael Kolinsky) and attended a tournament so painting vibe is back on.

This time first 5 (new) wyches. The photo is bit dark as I'm quite rarely at home during daylight (due to living in Finland where it's scarce.) Anyways:


And from slightly different angle.
http://jamo.1g.fi/eldar/dark+eldar/wyches3.JPG

Still 5 wyches, 10 warriors and raider to go until new additions (which will be some sort of flying vehicles.)