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That’s a problem most of us can empathise with, hopefully you get the chance to post your knights and the others get some desk time too. Though if the Phantom hogs the hobby time, I’m ok with that . The pose certainly looks cool already and the pinning seems to mean business!

Good plan, you definitely need to pin those Forge World monsters...catastrophic collapse is in the future if you do not.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks both - I certainly like to go overkill on how secure I make these forgeworld builds - I figure better to go too far and make sure it's never coming apart rather than risk collapse. I'm certain the JB Weld Original (the titan builder's best friend) would be sufficient by itself. I've said before I think that once it's cured the joints are probably stronger than the resin, but it doesn't take too much longer to drill some stainless pins in for that extra peace of mind. And to experience the general amusement that I'm legitimately using a power drill while building Warhammer.

Since I took those photos, I've now actually epoxied the legs and hips. I got it done just before going to stay with some friends for a few days, so it's definitely had plenty of time for the epoxy to cure - and since I came home, I've drilled more 3mm steel pins through the legs into the hip joints, and drilled some 2mm pins horizontally through the knee joint of the bent leg. Incidentally when I was at my friend's place, his FLGS had the plastic winged autarch on the shelves and I couldn't resist picking one up. I've already painted up one a while back, but now we've got the other plastic autarch and they're cross-compatible I'd been meaning to get another for swapping parts between them. So I now have 3 copies of the new infantry/warp jump autarch, a winged autarch, and various shining spears and shroud runners that can be used for kitbashes. After all I'm Biel-Tan - I should have an Autarch Council to rival my Seer Council!

Anyway, back to the Phantom, with legs that now stand on their own -



I managed to dry fit some of the torso pieces and the head, probably helped by the fact that I've already scored up all the contact surfaces for epoxy, so even dry fitted that gives them a fair bit of friction. Since it was getting towards full height (although missing the huge back vanes), I decided to put it against my revenant for scale. I remember noticing when I built the revenant that it was bigger than I realised when compared to the wraithknight. But although I'd forgotten that the revenant dwarfed a wraithknight, I certainly remembered that a phantom dwarfs a revenant! I shall have to take a photo with my Warlord at some point too.




I've also been working on painting the cockpit. There's a hinge mechanism that allows the cockpit to open, and there's a fair amount of fiddly painting to do inside the cockpit so I decided I was much better off getting that done before gluing it together. After I'd committed to my colours I had a look at the Mymaera Phantom on the Forgeworld store page and noticed that they'd done their cockpit interior in a wraithbone scheme, and only the exterior in craftworld colours, and actually I think that looks really cool. But by that point I was already fairly committed to maintaining Biel-Tan colours on the interior. If I was starting again I'd consider a more wraithbone based scheme, but I'm pretty happy with my white-and-green interior. It's not totally finished, but most of the work is done.

Great looking interior: the scale of this thing is wild!

Awesome stuff! The size of this is nuts! Great job on the interior, it looks really cool

I honestly can't believe it's been over four months since I last posted here. The phantom project has been going slower than I'd planned. I actually stopped building after the legs. I was looking at the torso and figuring out how to do it - I could assemble the whole thing, but that would make painting more awkward. I wanted to paint most of the torso green, but the back fins white. and the fins are a fairly integral part of the build - you can't put the shoulders and arms on without putting the fins on first. Given I was intending to airbrush, if I built the whole thing, I would have to paint one colour and then painstakingly mask it all off before painting the other colour. And I didn't quite fancy all of that masking. Instead I elected to paint all the torso pieces separately and eventually stick them together once fully painted, where the challenge will be gluing them together without loads of epoxy leaking out of the joints and ruining the paintjob. The other choice I faced was - do I magnetise the main guns, or just glue on the ones that I have? When I purchased it, I picked up two d-cannons. I might have chosen one d-cannon and one dire pulsar, but the pulsars were out of stock when I ordered, and I reasoned the d-cannon is the cooler weapon option anyway, so why not double up? I magnetised the guns on my Warlord because I worked out that I could do it without impacting the quality of the final model. But these phantom weapons (much like my wraithknights before it), I eventually decided that while I could magnetise, I thought that the end result wouldn't be quite as nice a build and finish as if I just committed to gluing them on. And how likely am I to buy other weapons for it anyway? So I committed, and glued in the arms and hands onto the d-cannon bodies. This titan's sticking with d-cannons, and I stand by my choice. Warp rifts for everyone!

Anyway, there was a fair bit of procrastination over that. I eventually got all the torso pieces mounted on rods on MDF blocks ready for painting, got them primed and then... the regulator on my compressor gave out. One new regulator later and I was back in action, but I was working on various other paintjobs in the meantime that I carried on with, particularly finishing Cursed City and paitning some Sororitas. I also added a couple more models to the Eldar. So, months of minimal progress on the Phantom. But I'm back at it. I've airbrushed all the white pieces and painstakingly applied my usual dark grey panel lining. Today I've started on the green bits by applying my black basecoat, followed by the first coat of Luftwaffe Camo Green. They still look really dark, but I was just pleased to see some green appearing, it felt like real progress. And the darkness is intentional - when I started airbrushing, I realised that my usual dark green basecoats were coming out pretty light over my grey auto primer, so I added a black basecoat stage such that the thin airbrushed Luftwaffe Camo Green layers come out a bit darker. There will be one or two more coats of Luftwaffe Camo Green (in the coming days hopefully) which will lighten it a touch, followed by my usual Medium Olive, Olive Green, Lime Green highlight stages.



Plus the two Eldar models I'd worked on in the meantime - my fourth Wraithlord and third War Walker. The wraithlord was fun. My first two Wraithlords were fully magnetised for all the options, for flexibility if I play a game and want to take one with whatever loadout. Since I had those flexible Wraithlords already available, I've felt free to do fun things with them, hence the third one glued in a running pose with the sword, and for this fourth one I wanted to use the gun grip hand to make a 'sniper wraithlord'. The instructions show this being used with the bright lance, but to be honest I think the bright lance looks a bit underwhelming mounted in that fashion. But I had a spare falcon turret, and so I grabbed the pulse laser. I felt the scale of it fits the sniper wraithlord a lot better, and I figure if I ever field it I'll just run it as dual bright lances. The war walker is a bit more straightforward, just modelled in a running pose, although looking back at it I think I should have maybe put the grounded foot a touch further forward, it does look like it's overbalancing a little. But that mild bit of hindsight aside, I'm pretty pleased.

Bellerophon,

Well the Phantom is massive and will take a lot of time and paint. Good luck on this model.

Cheers,

CB

Nice work on the Sniper Wraithlord, Bellerophon - I think you're right about the foot placement on that War Walker, as it does have an air of "Oops, I tripped" going on.

Good luck with the Phantom!

Loving the sniper wraithlord. The borrowed gun fits really well, to the point that I probably wouldn’t have spotted it’s not the one from the box. The walker is another great paint job, but I see what you’re meaning with the standing foot. I’d have been tempted to double down and put a dead space marine shaped obstacle there!

The Phantom is complete! This means many photos, and photos of the current state of the army. Exciting times for my collection!

Every time I get to one of these 'full army photo' milestones it's incredibly satisfying to sit back and look at all the work and love I've poured into the army, and feel happy that the motivation is still strong. Working on the phantom hasn't exactly reignited my love for my eldar, because it never went away, but it's certainly lit the afterburners. I'm really eager at the minute to paint more eldar, which in a way is a little annoying because I'm trying to work through my pile of shame and restrict my buying - and eldar only make up about a sixth of my shame pile as things stand. I don't need this rush of motivation to overwhelm my desire to paint things for my other projects!

So what's next? Well, I'm working on painting a squad of (new sculpt) Guardian Defenders, and I've got 6 Windriders and 10 (new) Rangers built and primed. I've also just started building my plastic Howling Banshees. Oddly enough I hadn't worked on any of those since they released, but I've got three boxes. I'm planning on building them with 3 Exarchs, one with each weapon loadout, and then painting all 15 in the same scheme. That way I've got a lot of flexibility on those rare occasions I actually take my army to a game.

I'm already wondering how much more stuff I'll need to paint for the army before I can take fresh army photos and have the collection be noticeably larger than in the photos I've taken today...


The Phantom





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How about all the Lords of War?







Titans!







The Full Swordwind




Rather than reducing the size of all the photos and/or dropping them here full size, I feel it probably just works better to drop the link to the imgur album. Many more (full res) photos to be found within!

Wow. Very impressive.

Great army shot, Bellerophon - any plans to get a second Revenant, for the traditional pair of Scout titans?

Thanks guys!

 Dysartes wrote:
Great army shot, Bellerophon - any plans to get a second Revenant, for the traditional pair of Scout titans?

It's certainly crossed my mind, even more so after I saw the sonic lance revenant in one of the displays at Warhammer World and noticed that it actually has a few more differences from the pulsar version other than just the guns, it's got a different back fin design and different armour plating on the front. So I would indeed like to grab one sometime. But there's also other FW eldar stuff that I don't have yet that I'd like to add, and I'm trying to buy less and paint through my shame pile a bit more...

Exalted Bellerophon.

Cheers,

CB

That's brutal man, great army!

Wow!!! Amazing. Cheffs kiss

DO you have more in the pipeline or are you happily saying your eldar is complete ?

Cheers guys

 Argive wrote:
DO you have more in the pipeline or are you happily saying your eldar is complete ?

The collection is never complete so long as I'm still enjoying painting them, and if anything, working on the Phantom and then seeing them set out like this has motivated me even more. I have about 3K points' worth in my shame pile, and plenty of things that aren't in my shame pile yet that I'd like to get my hands on! However I'm trying to resist buying and work on the backlog for a while, because it's fairly substantial. And it's got much more than just eldar in it, so I'm going to try to alternate my painting between different projects for a while. However, having said that... I am working on another guardian squad right now, and have 6 windriders and 10 rangers primed and ready!

Bahzhakhain!

Phantom looks magnificent.

Great jumpin' Jehosaphat on a pogo stick, what an army shot!

Uniformly high level of painting, uniform and/or complimentary (and complementary! whole color wheel used here) color schemes, highly dynamic posing - just a treat to look through.

Cracking work Bellerophon! The Titan is absolutely stunning, crowning achievements of a stunning army. That table must be strong to take what I assume is a lot of resin and metal! Glad to hear that you’re still enjoying painting the and there’s still plenty more to come. Restraining yourself from expanding the pile is a noble thing, I’ll keep an eye out for any other project logs

Wow.
I had forgotten how formidable your collection is and with the new additions, my Ulthwe is truly put to shame haha.
That is truly something to be proud of.

And just look at that Phantom. Amazing!

Once again, thank you everybody. I really appreciate your comments, and they're lovely to read. Sorry I've been quiet; I don't like to reply to comments too much if I don't have anything new to add (feels like bumping my thread unnecessarily), and although I've been busy painting still, I just hadn't been taking photos. So it's all built up to a pretty substantial update. I did say that the army is nowhere near finished...

We have here:

The first pair of Autarchs that I've built from the new kit. I have (two?) more, and another winged one, for some mix-and-match and kitbashing, so they're still to come. On these, I've stuck with my 'Biel-Tan Autarchs have yellow ochre faceplates' approach (based largely on how the studio painted the old metal warp jump generator one, a paintscheme I always really liked). I also decided to deviate a little bit from the colour palette and paint the armour of the footslogger black. I figured it made an interesting difference, so long as I included enough white and green (plus the Craftworld rune) so that it still looks like it belongs.

My first 10 Guardian Defenders from the new kit

6 more Windriders

10 more of the new Rangers. Not much to say here other than I've utilised most of the alternate builds in the kit, and for some of them I've deviated a bit from the instructions to mash different parts together, trying to make sure each one stays at least somewhat unique.

Another 10 Storm Guardians. Since I'd done fusion guns in the first 10, I did flamers and power swords in this group so that I had 2 of each upgrade option - though of course if they ever see the field in 10th, at the moment at least it's 'throw all the upgrades on...', so maybe I should have built all the upgrades with both groups!

My last 7 metal Striking Scorpions. I've seen all the rumours about a new plastic kit coming soon, so I wanted to get all my metals done beforehand. I was missing some chainswords though, so one of them has the Exarch chainsword (that normally pairs with the Scorpion's claw), and a couple of them have the slightly smaller/less decorative chainswords from the storm guardians. I wanted to do these in a scheme that wasn't primarily green, and settled on a yellow with green as secondary. I'm not sure what made me think to do it, but I ended up doing the chainswords black with a couple of diagonal green stripes across each one, and I like how it turned out.

Another 5 Dark Reapers, this time with an AML Exarch. I wanted to stray a bit from black, and settled on a dark purple, which I think works really well. Of course now I've noticed that you can have a squad of 10 in the 10th edition rules, so I feel as though I ought to have been painting squads of 10 the whole time! Even though reapers always felt appropriate in smaller groups, I suspect I'll have to do a full squad sometime.

10 of the current plastic Howling Banshees, which are actually the first set of the new ones I've painted. I originally had 15 on sprue and planned to build the group to include all 3 Exarch options, paint them in one scheme, and then I've got flexibility in how to take them to battle. But to be honest I prefer making full squads, and then I picked up the boarding patrol. So I ended up making a squad of 10 with a mirrorsword Exarch, given my old metal ones both have Executioners. I didn't plan it, but my decision to do them in a classic bone (albeit a bit more subdued/desaturated than usual), with purple sashes and hair, wound up making them pretty much an inversion of the dark reapers. I've decided that the original Exarchs of the two shrines were brother and sister, it's a nice little detail I think. This leaves me with 10 more on sprue. I haven't quite decided how to do those. Probably as another squad of 10, but then I'll have to pick from the remaining two Exarch loadouts. Because even though I've got two Executioners already, it's my favourite option, and I'd like to have one of the new ones. But the Triskele is really cool too. Maybe I just need to get even more banshees!

2 more Crimson Hunters. My first was built as an Exarch (with the little tail fin piece), and I always felt that the Exarch ought to have regular Crimson Hunters to lead - and so I've effectively turned it into a squadron of 3. Even though all Crimson Hunters have the choice of bright lance or starcannon now in 10th, I figured I'd stick to the previous fluff/loadout where the regular ones always have bright lances, so I just glued the lances in. I can take my Exarch model if I want starcannons. Because the idea was to make them a squadron / from the same shrine, I've painted them in the same scheme as the Exarch, which is basically the same as the studio scheme.

...so yeah, that's a fair amount of stuff to be adding. What next? I've got nothing built and ready, and I may well paint on some other projects for a bit. But I've still got some eldar to do - more banshees, some corsairs, some more tanks, more wraiths, more autarchs, more shroud runners...

Very nice work. Fun to see the non-stock colors on the aspects. Scorpions are particularly cool.

Wowsers! You’ve been a very busy Eldar! Stunnng stuff as usual, the whole gang, but those yellow scorpions are my favourites I think.

Be still, my heart! That's a ton of lovely Eldar.

Woah, that's a lot of space elves!
Always a pleasure to see the army moving forward. Great additions and they are looking amazing as always!

I do not get to use the work horde and Eldar in the same sentence very often.

Exalted Bellerophon.

Cheers,

CB

Hey everyone, another long gap between posts, but thanks for all your comments on the last one. I’ve been working on something for the last couple of months, and I thought it might be (mildly) amusing to wait to reveal it until it was finished...

Yep, it’s a Vampire Hunter! I’d wanted one of these for ages, it had been somewhat of a Holy Grail miniature for me, but eventually I managed to get my hands on one. It’s fairly standard for me with my Biel-Tan vehicle paint scheme. I suppose the most interesting choices were what to do in terms of freehand – I obviously wanted to do the standard thorns but I thought it would be a bit much to extend them across the entire model, so I decided to start them from the cockpit area and run them back a little way into the main fuselage – but mostly not on the wings. I also decided to put one piece of freehand on each side. On the right side we’ve got the standard ‘golden’ version of the Biel-Tan rune which I really enjoy painting onto my more prominent models. As before, I used the largest transfer from the standard sheet as a guide, and painted over the top of it. On the other wing, there’s a Khaine rune which is entirely freehand. I decided to do it in the same golden colours as the Biel-Tan rune. I’d enjoyed painting the Khaine Rune on the missile pod on my Phantom, and the large amount of space afforded by the Vampire wing gave me the opportunity to paint a nice big version.

The other difference is the cockpit canopies. For ages, I’ve been painting them by putting a coat of Vallejo Model Color Transparent Blue onto the inside surface, and painting the framing on the outside – while leaving the shiny finish of the clear plastic on the outside for the window sections. The idea was to tint the canopy enough that you couldn't see the outdated pilots inside the vehicles, but to keep the shininess of the plastic, but I’ve been somewhat dissatisfied with that approach for a while. I've thought it looked a bit rubbish compared with some of the nice airbrushed canopies I'd seen people do, but I’d stuck with it out of inertia and wanting models to match my previous ones. But I decided I didn’t want this model to have a cockpit that I wasn’t happy with, and that this was the time to update my approach. So this one is just airbrush painted in some nice blue gradients, and then matte varnished. I like it much better than what I used to do – so now I’m contemplating going back and repainting the canopies on all my older tanks! It won’t be a problem getting them off the models for airbrushing because I only glued them onto the tanks with a few contact points of PVA, because I was a bit paranoid about other glues fogging up the clear plastic. I shall have to see whether I can pull together the motivation to do it, because that would be a lot of canopies to revisit.

The base is a lasercut MDF oval, with a built-up rock formation made from a couple of layers of 18mm MDF, primarily so that I could drill a nice deep hole for the stand. The stand is a 300mm long 20mm diameter acrylic rod. Then, I built up the inside of the fuselage with a mixture of casting gate offcuts and milliput so that I had something solid to drill into. The stand goes a cm or two into the fuselage, and there's a pair of magnets in the stand and fuselage to ensure that it's more than just gravity holding the Vampire onto the stand. I've got a 10mm diameter 3mm deep magnet in the top of the stand, and 10mm by 10mm in the fuselage. They've got enough pull that I can pick the model up by the body, and it lifts the base.

After the full army photos at the start of this year, I had been wondering how much further I would have to expand the collection before I could take more full army photos and have the collection be noticeably bigger than it was the last time – and I think if nothing else, having a Vampire Hunter in the back will be an obvious visual point of difference. I’ve also got the recent additions from my last post to include. But I’d still like to keep adding a few more models before it’s going to be worthwhile setting the whole lot up for photos again. I’m partway into painting another two Wave Serpents, and I’ve got a fair few things on sprue that I’d like to get painted soon. I think my main goals will be:

More Night Spinners, because there’s only one in the collection so far and I have two on sprue

More Dire Avengers, since I feel that they should be the backbone of any Swordwind, and from my previous full army photos I realised that the 35 I already had were getting a bit lost in the noise. There clearly weren’t enough of them! I’ve managed to get some decent deals on ebay for a few more sets.

More Shining Spears (because I only have one squad of the new ones so far)

And I’d really like to get my hands on some of the new Striking Scorpions – I hope GW print enough of the Kill Team Salvation set to go around.

There's a fair few other things in the queue too. Always more Eldar to paint.
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Time for some photos. I know when I’ve posted my large new models previously, I’ve gathered all of the superheavies together for a group shot. But this time, this one was so big, I thought the most appropriate size comparison was to take a photo with my Phantom and Warlord!

Fabulous. Always nice to see what you have been up to.

Very nice!