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I'm glad that I decided to did these models out of the closet and try painting them up in the Drowned Gardens colors. Sure the sculpts aren't as sharp as the new models but I've really grown to like these guys. I think it might be because the weathering helps add just that extra bit of visual "texture" that the models needed.



@IceAngel: Post some pics if you give it a go! I've found the documentary to be tremendously entertaining and educational. Send me a PM if you want to discuss further.

Phew, I haven't posted anything in almost a month!

Which is a natural result of the fact that my Steam account shows I've played 121 hours of Civilization IV in the last month. About 4 hours a day . I blame it all on me lacking resistance to deep PC-based strategy games, probably a result of growing up in a predominantly console based environment . I almost broke away at about the 40 hour mark because while remaining very compelling, a lot of the game mechanics still felt a bit too un-intuitive and I wasn't really understanding how to manage cities effectively. But at some point soon afterwards I had one of those moments where everything just clicks together (with the help of a lot of guide reading) and I was sucked right back in.

No promises on when exactly I'll be back so here's a shot of the completed Claw Grot that I forgot to post. Comparing this photo to the last shot of the un-based model illustrates the dramatic difference that a finished base makes to the overall appearance of the model. I also needed a elevated base to keep the claw from dragging on the table because it really is a bit big !



Finally, a last minute realization: I've realized (again) while writing this post how much fun sharing stuff on Dakka is. So please send me some suggestions on what you'd like to see next, a really outlandishly creative suggestion may be my only hope of being shocked out of Civ .

That last post, and my first visit to my FLGS in a month (hadn't gone because I had a lot of friends back for the holidays...okay and because of Civ) actually helped me get back into wanting to do hobby stuff. In the short term I'm going to actually do some more mundane stuff and paint some crew for my skimmers, mainly because I'd like to be able to think of them as complete! I don't think it's my OCD kicking in since I have no intention of painting and gluing on all the hull spikes!

@IceAngel: Mostly looking for DE ideas but I'm definitely open to any kind of inspiration. But really if I take a break from DE I'll probably go back to my general painting improvement thread:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/452097.page
I backed the Reaper Bones Kickstarter so there will be no shortage of things to paint! The thing is I've really enjoyed getting so comfortable with a color scheme that I can consistently produce a result I'm happy with, in a reasonable amount of time, no matter what model I pick.

@Gitsplitta: It was a happy accident that the claws turned out to be such a good match for my turquoise armor while still being visually distinct as a different material. All ideas are welcome but like I said above I do have some short term plans now.

@Sheep & Urien_Rakarth: Definitely a creative idea that I'll keep in mind! The idea reminds me of the awesome mid-camouflage switching Stealthsuit models and the mid-teleport marine models I've seen.

@varl: For the infantry models, just superglue. Although every time a model breaks off I tell myself I'm going to pin them someday (right after I finish painting all the models I own) ! The Grotesque however is firmly attached to it's base. The Rat Ogre models already have plastic pegs in their feet which I drilled holes in the base for.

Exciting news! The manager at my FLGS said they are teaming up with another game store to put together a miniature wargaming display at a mall here in Hong Kong to promote the hobby and they wanted to borrow my army for the display. I initially had some concerns about security but the display cases they've got look reassuringly sturdy . I'll put up more details on where and when once the details get confirmed.

I was down at the FLGS for a game yesterday and got absolutely destroyed by Necrons . But on the plus side here's a picture of the Kabal in it's current form on display at the shop, the six Gotesques being the most notable update from the last army pic:

Quick bit of painting, now all my Venoms have gunners (hopefully they'll hit more often) !



@Casey's Law and Gitsplitta:

@KrautScientist: I've thought about a display board, but the thing is I can't ever see myself using one. Eventually when the army comes home from the FLGS I'm planning on putting the minis in one of those IKEA glass cabinets with glass on all sides which isn't big enough for a display board.

@Meeghan: Thanks for the kind works and welcome to Dakka!

@Meeghan & KrautScientist on objective markers: I'll have a think about markers. I've got a ton of DE bits now so it should be fun to try and dig through them to put something together.

@SlaveToDorkness: That thread is actually exactly what gave me the idea to use IKEA display cases! Thanks for the link though.

@KrautScientist: Giving how prone I am to knocking stuff over I'd better put the case in a corner and bolt it into the wall then ! The biggest scare I've had was the one time I put my minis on a modular terrain board up on my FLGS's terrain rack pre-deployment. I knelt down to get some terrain off the bottom shelf and as I stood up I knocked the board over sending the mini's clattering down through the rack (this included six jetbikes) . Amazingly the damage was limited to a bunch of miniatures coming off their bases!

I was just planning on taking some photos of the Grotesques but then decided to go for a more interesting arrangement with terrain and other models and ended up spending about an hour taking photos! Here's the one I'm most pleased with, almost looks like it could go on the back of White Dwarf doesn't it ? It was only just now when I was selecting and processing photos that I realized that I could make a legal 500pt Haemonculi Coven skirmish army from the models in the picture. That fact suddenly made the photo seem even cooler !

Been working on some Raider crew but it's slow going. I've realized that I'm much more motivated when I can look forward to a paint job making a visible difference on the tabletop and when I play games with my DE never notice whether a particular flying boat has crew or not! So why am I painting crew? Because the Raiders look much better on display that way and if there's one thing my Dark Eldar enjoy more than a successful raid it's looking pretty on a shelf .

@Ovion: Ask around you local FLGS, my feeling (based on a sample size of 3) is that most people build Talos models instead of Chronos models and should have spare masks lying around.

@Arakasi & Casey's Law: A WD appearance would be fun but unfortunately that post wasn't a hint of any sort!

@Gitsplitta & Squidbot: Thanks !

@Young_Logan: Care to share those other plans?

@IPS: The list is almost exactly WYSIWYG (depending on whether you consider the twin blade arm Grot to be an acceptable Scissorhand) roughly: Haemonculus w/ Venom Blade, Six Grotesques including an Abberation w/Scissorhand, two units of three Wracks, Talos w/ Chain flails, Additional CCW & Twin Linked Haywire Blaster.

@Squigsquasher: I'd recommend a weekly check for better health, wealth and happiness.

Progress update on the Raider crews. They win the most boring award because if you paint all the crew for the Raiders and Ravagers in your army, instead of having a couple of new squads fighting on the table you just have them standing on boats. Forever.

Pop quiz for observant readers of this blog:
One of the heads on the models below is recycled from another model I fully painted and then decided to use a different head for (this decision process is all on the blog). What was the original model?
First to respond correctly gets a (virtual) pain token. Note: May not actually give you a 5+ Feel No Pain save .



@Young_Logan: I've also seen Dark Elf Cold One Riders used to good effect as Exodite Beastmasters or Jetbikes.

@Urien_Rakarth: The last time that many Eldar were burned it gave rise to Slannesh. So maybe you'll get a new Chaos Daemons army out of this .

@Ovion: If Ravagers and planes weren't such a necessity I think GW would have sold a lot more Talos models. I hardly ever see any being used over here either.

aaaaand done! To me they look like two guys with PS3 controllers and two guys playing Kinect . For the answer to the pop quiz: the recycled head was the one on the far right, from my original Incubi concept.



Now time to think about some objective markers.

I was rummaging through my bits box thinking about what to use for Dark Eldar objective markers. I found that the problem with a lot of Dark Eldar bits is that they're quite delicate so don't really show up well on a base unless you pile them up. But it didn't seem very in character for Kabalites to leave little piles of equipment lying around like dirty laundry . So I turned to Google image search for inspiration and found that I liked the idea of using the trophy poles that come with DE vehicles. They're tall enough to show up on the table and look great with the addition of a few chains and additional trophies. These could also double as pain tokens if objectives aren't needed.



@Terminado907: Sure, enjoy your (imaginary) 5+ FNP save (HAEMONCULUS GENERAL'S WARNING: Lascannons Cause Instant Death)!

So here's one done! Turned out quite well I think. I decided to rust up the chains to give a bit more color on the spears. Having both silver chains and silver spearheads looked a little samey.



Glad everyone seems to like the "simple but elegant" approach (if that can be said about skulls on a pole)!

@Young_Logan: Good idea, I'm thinking about how to incorporate a dice holder into the rocks of another objective.

Finished painting the second objective marker. The greenish tinge to the severed head was particularly effective, although it was difficult to make it noticeable without being comically green. If I ever paint up some zombies I'll definitely remember this color combination. My color mixture for this greenish skin was a tiny bit of Scorpion Green with Deneb Stone. Any bright green with a light beige would probably work as well (I know my colors are out of date but I stocked up on some essentials before the recent Citadel switch so I haven't really tried the new paints ).

So, here's the Kabal of the Drowned Gardens on display at the Kowlooon City Plaza mall here in Hong Kong! There are some White Scars in the case too but we all know who the stars of this showcase are . I was too busy with work to help with the display setup but the FLGS staff did a great job in arranging all the mini's in a cinematic battle scene. The reflective glass made it difficult to take good photos, but I was told that some people showed up with fancy photo equipment and took some better shots (I'll try to put a link to those up once I find out where they've been uploaded). All in all it was fun to see my mini's on display in such a public space and watch all the people going up to have a closer look!

aaaaaaaand I'm back! I blame the combination of Borderlands 2 and a few good friends who have made career changes that allow them more free time . But wow that game is fun to play with a group of people ! On a related note, a few of you dear readers wondered if I would think about painting some Tau. Borderlands 2 has actually given me a bit of a urge to paint up some Tau in the bright yellow Hyperion color scheme from that game (led by Handsome Jack as an Ethereal ). The rumors of new Eldar models in June also raise interesting possibilities.

Anyway, before anything new I wanted to paint these guys up because I like the conversions so much that it seems a shame to let them sit unpainted.

Hooray - almost done !

Still need to do the fur, the rust and some minor details. At first I thought the ratio of copper to turquoise parts on the liquifier grot was a bit high but it all turned out fine after I applied washes to everything.



@IceAngel: I haven't bought the Season Pass yet but definitely plan to!

These two guys are complete! The fact that my Mechromancer is now level 61 did contribute significantly to the delay . I still really like how the fur looks in photos. I don't know if I've said this before in this thread but in my head these Grotesques are so furry because they were originally captured Space Wolves .







@CalasTyphon216: Thanks for the generous offer but I'm done with the Grots for now. I've got eight of them and am pretty much out of ideas on how to make them look unique! What I would appreciate is any spare Battlesuits if you've got any lying around since I'm thinking seriously about that Borderlands 2 Hyperion Tau army idea .

@Darth Bob: I've got a stock GW Haemonculus model but haven't painted him up because I like the way Sara (my Haemonculus conversion) looks so much more. But I may paint him up eventually since I often find myself having to using a Wrack model as a proxy second Haemy.

@Casey's Law: Thanks, I hope they look even better now!

Will this post title help this thread over 200k views ? Let's just leave Dakka's tastes aside and say that whatever's under that bodysuit probably requires a NSFL tag . On a different note, I am really grateful at all the continued support this thread has received. I know that 200k isn't in the neighborhood of a Gitsplitta thread , but it is an indication that several hundred people around the world are consistently following along. I still think that's pretty amazing given how niche our hobby is. Anyway here are the Haemonculus boobs you all came here for. As always, all comments and criticism welcome !



You can all credit/blame Darth Bob for this one since he commented on wanting to see another character. As I said in a previous post, I needed to paint up another Haemonculus for games so I was going to do a quick job on the stock GW model. So I chiseled it out of the sheet of "Finecast" flash it was encased in and started cleaning up the parts and test fitting them. But after a while it occurred to me that I really wasn't very keen on the stock pose and I wasn't very excited to paint it. The main problem being that the Haemonculus is just sort of holding stuff out like floating coat rack.

So, seeing that the "corset" on the model looked a lot like the one worn by my first female Haemonculus conversion I decided to try and make a sister for her. It was after I had hacked away the top half of the model and was whittling away at the upper torso of a Wych that the whole conversion started to seem a little ridiculous. I was trying to "dock" a set of miniature breasts into the upper torso of a male model and they weren't fitting very well ! I thought I'd gone and ruined a model on a whim and also realized that Finecast models are a bit too expensive to chop up without a plan.

But after several hours of careful fitting and rummaging through my bits box I think the result was worth the effort! The pose I settled on is the Haemonculus getting ready to casually jab a syringe into a Grotesque to regulate the chemical cocktail raging through its body.

So, it seems like Dakka really likes Haemonculus boobs . The thread gained over 2500 views on that post alone (or my closet full of Wracks hitting F5 over and over again has finally gotten up to speed)!

Squigsquasher raised an interesting question about painting some designs on the helmet. I've been considering glyph or eye designs as well as some more ambitious suggestions. For example, adding a cracked section with a small tentacle on tongue coming out. Any ideas?

@Gitsplitta: Thanks Gits! I've sometimes also thought that part of this thread's success is because I generally include a picture in almost every post. Although to be honest, the pictures are more of a beneficial side effect of me being a reluctant writer and trying to avoid writing by using pictures instead. I tend to try to do the same thing at work. Fortunately (but really unsurprisingly), clients also seem to like looking at pictures more than reading walls of text !

@walker90234: I thought about that but I kind of like the half cloak look. I just think of it as tucked into the corset. I'll get her undercoated and I might add some stitches if she looks like she needs it.

@CalasTyphon216: I generally don't do commissions because my hobby time is generally more valuable to me than what I could reasonably charge. However feel free to PM me with details. If you're going to be here in Hong Kong I'd ask around at Fun Atelier since there are a lot of extremely talented sculptors who might be interested.

I'm going to get in trouble for these thread titles .

Here's a quick WIP of what I've gotten done over the past few days. I did a minor but very time consuming bit of greenstuff work to tidy up the join between the upper and lower chest area and add little "staples" to connect the cloak to her body.

Even a little paint does a lot to bring the conversion together. The part that took me the longest was the cloak. At first I had painted and shaded it in a dark leather color to match the rest of the Kabal. However, that made the model too dark overall and honestly made her look like a bit of a bum in a ragged coat. So back to the old horror standby of the bloody flayed garment which I think looks a lot better on her.

I played a great narrative game this weekend revolving around White Scars forming the rearguard in the evacuation of an Imperial World under attack by Tyranids lured there by the Dark Eldar. So two fast armies going right at each other while random Tyranids burst out of buildings!

The highlight on the White Scars side was Kahn killing three Grotesques (two through Instant Death) himself and his squad carving up the other five over two turns.

On the other hand, I found out that if you roll a six for a Talos’ D6 attacks three turns in a row (admittedly with the help of chain flails), things will be dead. In this case it was ten Bikers and two Attack Bikes.

The game ended with the White Scars having protected their Tyranid repelling beacon, giving the evacuees enough time to escape, while the Drowned Gardens held their portal open long enough for some Tyranid specimens to be captured. So a win-win situation for everyone involved! Well, except for everyone in the 75% of each army that got killed of course!

The Grotesques and Kahn about to get stuck in. This was the first game that I used all eight Grotesques together, I hadn't realized just how big an area of the table they take up!


The Talos about to have it's first Biker meal of the game.

We interrupt this content for a important request to our loyal readers:

WANTED: Sweet ride for twin Haemonculi sisters and seven of their beefiest bioengineered BFFs!

Hallo Kabalites!

Do you know what the Kabal of the Drowned Gardens needs right now?

A Tantalus!

But your support is really needed for this to happen, and I’m not going to beg for money.

Ok, just kidding.

Yes I am.

What I'd like to find out is whether readers would be interested enough in reading about a Tantalus build to fund the purchase of one.

If you would be willing to make a contribution please drop a reply in this thread, PM, or email me with the amount you'd be willing to pledge. This is on the honor system .

The goal is US$130, the price of a Tantalus, and I'll try to get a big Forgeworld order together with other people to save shipping. If we hit the goal, I'll send out payment requests through Paypal.

As an extra incentive, anyone who pledges $10 or more will be emailed a battle report I will write of a game featuring the Tantalus (with lots of photos of course) !

Why aim for a Tantalus now and not before? Well, for the last several months I’ve found a few people who, like me, prefer playing narrative games over competitive ones. I’m not a fan of 6th edition as a competitive game, but I think it’s a good framework for narrative battles (once you bolt in a few indie-RPG storytelling elements). Because of this, I’m now confident that the model would get many more chances to be used on the tabletop and am excited to paint it up as a centerpiece!


And now back to your regularly scheduled P&M content:

Presenting Sue the Haemonculus fully painted and ready to melt some Marines!





I'm extremely happy with how she looks completed. I experimented with a lot of different faceplate designs but decided on a mottled green pattern, suggesting something unusual is going on inside the helmet.

Boringstuff: Well spotted! The White Scars army is the same one from the mall display. That's probably why the game ended in a tie. Both armies had had a lot of experience fighting each other!

CalasTyphon216: Sure I'm up for a game !

Casey's Law: I think it was more than a year ago, but we're in a whole new edition now! Looking forward to your support!

A Kvlt Ghost: Thanks! I actually did some more touch up work on the helmet face plate to make it look more iridescent. Like a green opal. I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

Presenting the Haemonculi Sisters of the Drowned Gardens! To go off on a tangent, I just noticed that Dakka's spell check function corrects "Haemonculi" to "Emasculation" . This leads me to wonder whether my Grotesques all have high pitched voices despite their burly builds .



Also, a friendly reminder that I'd like to know whether readers would be interested enough in reading about a Tantalus build to fund the purchase of one. If you would be willing to make a contribution please drop a reply in this thread, PM, or email me with the amount you'd be willing to pledge. Please see two posts ago for details since I don't plan on spamming my own thread too much !

I've been spending some time on assorted tasks that generally improve the condition of the army. Sticking the Raider Crew I painted a while back onto their Raiders, pose adjustments, fixing chipped paint on bases and other minor repairs, that sort of thing. Basically all the things that I've been putting off because they're not an exciting new model!

However, one thing I did that I found pretty satisfying was some improvements I made to my troops tray. Even through the tray could have been custom cut to fit the models exactly, I chose not to go that route because I thought it would be a pain to have to put away all the models in their exact slots. The downside was that the models were free to move around a bit too much. The compromise I've come up with is to use pluck foam pieces to create two level slots for the models. Most of the spaces are general enough to hold most models and yet still stop them from moving around. Also, nothing needs to be glued down so I can always change the layout.



Finally, so far I've had a couple people say they'd be interested in contributing towards a Tantalus for the Haemonculi sisters and their Grots to ride in, putting us at $30 of the $130 goal. I'll keep this open until the end of June but would be grateful for any early indications of interest .


@KrautScientist: I really like that idea! Any thoughts on base models?

I posted this a while ago in a discussion forum but it didn't get much play. I still think it's an interesting question so I'd like to see if any of the regular readers out there have any thoughts. I decided that it wasn't wildly off topic for a P&M blog because it helps me think about what would look good together as an army on the table or in a display. Before I initiate the wall of text I'd like to thank KrautScientist and Ovion for their suggestions. I'll have a hunt around the surviving bitz sites.

So, I happened to do some navel-gazing about Dark Eldar fluff and would be interested in what people think about these questions:

What is the most out of character army list you can think of for a Dark Eldar army?

What about the most in character list?

Since the Dark Eldar tend to fight as raiding forces with extremely idiosyncratic leaders there might not actually be a what you could call a “archetypical” Dark Eldar army build.

Not at least in the way that an Ultramarine army made up mainly of 10 man Tactical Squads in Rhinos with a healthy sprinkle of Terminators, Assault Marines, Devastators, Land Speeders and Predators would probably pass inspection by even the most zealous fluff inquisitor without having to provide any extra background explanation.

That moved me onto wondering if I could come up with a completely out of character army list which would need a really awkward background story to explain. I assumed no allies and gave no thought to game-play performance other than it had to be a valid list at 2000pts, one force org chart. I also tried to mainly take wargear choices that would make a visible WYSWIG difference on the tabletop since I wasn't trying to build the worst possible army (that's another discussion):

After some noodling around I came up with the following three lists:

“Special Snowflakes”
Here I tried to make everything as different as possible and not have much that hung together in terms of background. However, strangely enough I think this list would have the best chance out of the three in a Best Army category because it could look pretty good on the tabletop.


“Homogeneity”
Surprisingly you can make a 2000 point Dark Eldar army using almost identical units. The Archon has invisible wargear so he's less noticeable.


“Some of These Things Are Not Like The Others”
Finally I came up with a combination of the two lists above, a core of blandness with some really awkward looking additions. My vote would go to this one for being the hardest to explain.


I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. But please put any text walls or lists in spoiler boxes so we don't nuke the thread .

One of the reasons why I decided to go for a weathered look on my Dark Eldar was to avoid having to do so much edge highlighting. With my skills at the time it seem like it would be incredibly frustrating to highlight them neatly. However, now when I look at some of my older models up close they lack some of the visual pop of my newer stuff. They still look great on the tabletop but could use a bit of extra work so they fit in with the rest of my army. While I was at it I also painted some glyph patterns on the front.

I've been highlighting the Reavers as one big batch but decided to finish one first to see how it looks. It's not a dramatic difference but I'm happy with how it provides a bit more visual interest to the model.



Wow, you guys sure jumped on me for army list errors . I wrote those lists more an an exploration of the visual look and background of a Dark Eldar army rather than anything I would think of fielding in a game . I thought that KrautScientist came up with some rather brilliant fluff for the first list though. I wrote that one mainly to try to cram as much unrelated stuff together as possible but he made it actually sound pretty cool.

@Smiggle: Feel free to "borrow" any parts of or even the whole scheme ! I use sports teams colors all the time 'for references.

@Bengo2105: Glad you had a good read. Now get out there and paint up some new Kabalites!

A quick comparison shot to show the the extra detailing on the Reavers I'm doing. Keep in mind that the Jetbike on the right is a bit more weathered to begin with.

Thanks for the encouragement guys! But you all liked the original Jetbikes fine when I posted them a few years ago ! Actually I did too but it seems that I've raised the bar on myself!

Here we go! Three refurbished Reaver Jetbikes! The hardest part was coming up with designs to paint to the Jetbike "hoods." I tend to try and paint designs that somewhat ignore the sculpted details of the model because I think it makes the Jetbikes look more streamlined. What makes it tough is that you can't ignore the sculpt completely because then it just looks like you painted some random designs. I've been looking at a lot of runes and tribal masks for inspiration, as well as my own vehicles!

Oh yeah, the second half of this post's title isn't really relevant, I just went with the alliteration and ridiculous made up word from a video game title.



@Nivoglibina: If I were to do them from scratch, I'd paint everything including the runic designs and highlighting and then weather once that's done. You can take a look at some of the previous posts in this thread on how I paint my vehicles if you'd like some examples.

Hello!

Just wanted to check in with everyone to let you know what's up! I've still been highlighting Reavers but the pace has fallen off a bit due to: 1. The Tiny Tina DLC for Borderlands 2, 2. The Steam sale which means I am catching up on a huge backlog of games and 3. I'm leaving for Tokyo today for a vacation and have been spending a lot of time reading up on what to do! So, basically the Kabal is on summer vacation playing video games and visiting exciting foreign destinations .

Of course I'll be visiting some hobby shops in Tokyo to see what interesting tools and paints they have. I bought my first MIG weathering powders on a trip to Tokyo 3 or so years ago and they've been used to weather my whole Kabal!

@Foolish_Hyena: The bases are made of Milliput putty rolled out into flat pancakes and then broken up into slabs once dried. You can find some step by step tutorials a ways back in this thread.