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 Inevitable_Faith wrote:

Thank you for the painting tips Gummy, I'm not normally a fan of mixing paints for custom colours cause I'm notorious for forgetting what paints I used and I never write anything down. I may try out your style all the same though cause it'll be a good learning experience and it's always good to try something new to broaden your horizons.

One of the (many) perks of blogging is having a record of your actions. There have been a few times when I sifted through my old posts looking for how I did something earlier. So if you mix paints, just add the ratios/paints used to your next update.

Looking forwards to what you do with a Wraithknight provided you've got a big enough brush, I've found that painting the odd bigger model is quite good fun and very different to painting lots of little ones

Small update on the Bloodbrides. I really wanted to make my Bloodbrides stand out from the main force of Wyches so I opted for some colour swaps to go with the head swap. I was hard pressed for inspiration until it dawned on me: Bloodbrides...Brides... Wedding dress... white... man I hate painting white... oh well time to hate life!

So here's the beginnings of my Bloodbride test model. Most of the colours are unchanged but you can see the beginnings of the white undersuit, I'm building it up from light grey and the final colour will be an off-white grey with white highlights. Hopefully it works, this is my first time painting white in this manner. Let me know what you guys think.

Sounds like an interesting concept. Should look fine. Black/white swaps aren’t disruptive to the color scheme of an army.

And I hear you about painting white. I’m not going to say it’s my least favorite color to do, but it’s up there.

Agreed Nev, black and white are interchangeable in almost any situation as they are neutrals, shades rather than colours.

So this was my first time painting "white" in this manner: layering light greys up to a final "off-white" grey. For my first time doing it I'm quite happy with the results, it's not perfect but that'll come with practice. Painting this way was definitely much more enjoyable than my prior attempts at white as well, still more tedious than many other colours but I feel the effect is worthwhile.

I also learned this evening that taking photos of near white models is very difficult, it reflects so much that it's hard to get a photo not blown out with flare that drowns out any amount of colour variation. Took a lot of experimentation with the light box to find photos that "sucked less than the last one". Anyways I hope these photos can even come close to doing the actual model justice.

Please let me know what you guys think, does this look alright? Is it a stupid concept? I present to you, my first Bloodbride. (Or is it a Bloodgroom in this case? )

Bloodbride is looking great!

To help reduce burnout you could try a neutral grey background.

The wyches are looking ace! I really like the subtle purple shading, it really compliments the pink.

Going with white was a great choice, it definitely differentiates the models up from your other wyches, which is important for such an elite unit.

Im incredibly excited to see what you'll do with a wraithknight. If it is in your craftworld eldar scheme, I am certain it will be astounding.

@ChaoticMind: Thank you. I'll definitely be trying out different ways to photograph these models, I'll see what I got that will work as a grey background. I'm thinking I may try to diffuse my lights even more than what the light box does too.

@Gummyofallbears: Thanks dude. The shading is carroburg crimson but I heavily dilute it with water before applying it and in person it actually comes out more pinkish, the joys of photography though, nothing looks exactly as it does in person. I'm glad you like the white scheme, I was worried it wouldn't look good but the model is growing on me the more I look at it. I'm going to finish the other 4 bloodbrides first for this months comp then move on to the Knight. It'll be in the same colours as my Craftworld Eldar but I'm not sure I'm going to do the water ripple effect on it yet. I have a ton of reference photos to go off of and hopefully that'll help me with a scheme.

Love the colour of the bloodbrides they'll definitely stand out from the rest of your Wych Cult

Definitely looking forward to the Wraithknight too, and the rest of the Brides/Grooms

Thanks Ynneadwraith, part of me is excited to start the Wk aswell but most of me is terrified by the sheer size of the thing and scope of the project.

I thought the same thing with my Carnosaur but the moment I wasn't painting it with a fine detail brush it was really enjoyable and not intimidating at all

Wyches you say? Color me intrigued.

Natural light (but not direct) can help improve the photos of White models if they are on a dark background.

Nice Bloodbride/groom...although with Dark Eldar it likely does not matter or bother them.

Cheers,

CB

Blood Brides are looking good.

EDC

@YnneadWraith: I'll see when the moment comes, not quite there yet. I'm sure once I got my final plan figured out it won't be bad at all.

@War Kitten: Thank you, I hope you enjoy the progress on the Wyches/Bloodbrides. The full Dark Eldar project starts on page 5 with some wyches if you want to see the whole thing from the start.

@Captain Brown: Thanks for the tip, I have a spot I can take photos that gets a fair amount of natural light, I'll try it out next time I'm shooting and see if I can get better results.

@evildrcheese: Thanks dude, glad you like them.

Bloodbride/groom/fella is looking well tasty. And yes - photoing whites n off whites is an utter @$%#%#% in the ass! He's looking great though

Thank you very much Jan. I must thank you by the way for this scheme. I used to paint white with just a white paint but it was while watching you on stream you talked about painting "off-whites" instead. That go the ball rolling for me to change to this style of painting to achieve this model. So thanks man, I really appreciate the tips and the feedback on my models.

no worries bud. Anytime. Just shoot me a message here or over on twitch if you ever have anything you want a sounding board for

Little progress update for a decent afternoon of getting to paint. The second Bloodbride is coming along not too bad in my opinion, got a lot of the bases blocked out and the white undersuit is coming along nicely.

I also figured it'd be fun to show a bit of what I work with. When I start a project I pull all the paints I'll need and organize them on my portable paint tray (I sometimes travel with my painting supplies so all my hobbying gets done out of my portable kit) and this way I know I always have every single colour I need for the project on hand and within easy reach. For this reason it's difficult for me to jump between two projects such as my Craftworld Eldar and my DE as this would require me to re-shuffle and select the paints necessary for either force. So below you can see all the paints that go into painting one Wych, yup every single pot there is used in either some small or large manner (for example the red is just for the soft part of the grip on the melee weapons). It's crazy to think that in the process of painting a single DE model every single one of those pots will be used at some point, I never really thought about it much until this afternoon while painting up my second Bloodbride and I looked over to see my tray and it's like I noticed what was on it for the very first time. Anyways that's enough of my insane ramblings, it's just something I noticed today that I found interesting and figured I'd share.

Thanks for that, I recently pulled my old DE models out of storage and glued them back together (10 Wyches and a Succubus). So I'm looking for some painting inspiration for my own Wych Cult if I decide to re-invest in them

Lots of people hate on DE for being a very underpowered army right now and while I can see where that comes from (DE isn't close to top tier right now) I feel they aren't really all that bad either. Most of the codex is pretty useable with a couple exceptions. While I love Hellion models I think they are too situational as to where they can be useful and they will always be outdone by reavers. Wyches are really hated right now but to be honest I feel that's more from the guys who played them as Haywire tank destroyers previously and now can't adjust their tactics to a new playstyle. I quite enjoy running my Wyches and they have served me quite well. The 4++ in CC is actually super useful and if you roll good on the drug table (there are some combat drugs I sincerely wonder why they put in the list at all, they're so useless) you can actually put out some pain.

A succubus and a unit of Wyches is a good start to a Wych cult, throw in a raider and that's the beginning of a decent casual game build (if you want competitive kabalites are still better). Hopefully you get inspired to paint them up and if you do let me know, I'd love to see them.

Yeah I have wondered whether people are using Wyches properly, or whether they're just bad at their intended purpose.

You can't just throw them at a big blob of Guardsmen/Cultists and watch them chew through them. a 4++ is still just a 50% chance of not dying.

Would they do better thrown at something with squad-wide AP CC weapons? A 4++ is much better than armour when there's AP3 (or even AP5) around, and units like that tend to come with a relatively low volume of attacks.

I wonder how they mathammer against Wraithblades...

The ideal list I had in mind is based off the Cult of the Red Grief, so lots of Wyches in Raiders backed up by Reavers/Hellions/Scourges/Razorwings/Voidravens etc. Fast and (hopefully) lethal

And I've always thought of Wyches sort of like Assault Marines for my UM. Send them at units that you know they can win in combat against, and use your supporting units (Hi Reavers) against those other units that are a bit too hard for your Wyches to kill

Yeah I love throwing my Wyches against things like termies, monstrous creatures and essentially anything with a low volume of attacks but good AP. It's also important to remember that you have FNP so by turn 3 you have a 4++ 5+++ in combat which is actually pretty survivable, by turn 5 you're fearless to boot so even if you lose combat you won't be running away. Even if you do lose combat early on your high initiative helps keep you from being swept. Also don't forget to fire their pistols whenever you can, they get half as many shots as Kabalites but they're still poisoned, that's still worthwhile and is tons of fun against MC. For my Wyches I tend to use them as tie-up units to lock down the enemy big hitters, if I want something dead then I'll usually assault multiple wych units at one target and drown them in dice, that usually does the trick.

Wyches in raiders are the way to go for them War Kitten imo. I used to do dark lances but lately I've been favouring the disintegrator cannons, wyches don't have any AP 2 (and a Hekatrix with agoniser, while cool, is just really far too exensive) so it helps out and it's got more shots which is nice when you jinked the raider. Haywire grenades on every hekatrix is what I do, you get one to throw and one in the assault phase, so far I've been pretty lucky with them and have been able to put out a couple HP of damage from each Hekatrix per game.

Reavers are good and really versatile, caltrops for assault or blaster/heat lances for vehicle hunting. Hellions are... hard to use and hard to justify the points over just taking more reavers, they just look so damn sexy though. Scourges are fantastic and super versatile too, they can give some beta strike punch to your otherwise lacking AT capabilities. Razorwings are good, all them pie plates make short work of hordes which leaves your wyches to clean up duty where they will shine. Voidravens are... less good. The model is gorgeous but the bomb just isn't impressive and it's too expensive points-wise for what it can do, in a competitive meta I wouldn't take a voidraven but in casual games I can't wait to get one.

Hopefully that gives you an idea of what you'd like to do War Kitten, they're a super fun army to play but they are a scalpel, really hard to use and require lots of precision. Keep in mind that all this is just my opinion, others will say differently on how DE perform, I'm just talking from my experiences.

As for the hobby side of things I am almost finished my second Bloodbride. I put the washes on last night and today I just gotta layer up the skin, layer up the pink armor plates, clean up the rose metallic and do some details highlights. After that is paint up the base and it'll be done. I think I'll batch paint the last three Bloodbrides after this one. I was still nervous about getting the model to look nice even after the first so I decided to do this one as another single to practice some more.

Honestly, Wyches are a good tarpit. With S3 they will even have trouble killing things like marines, but they are amazing to tarpit with (Hi 4+ invuln)

Hellions are bad IMO, simply because they can't jink and have no way of improving that terrible 5+, and if they wanna use cover, they risk dangerous terrain (which will kill them because of a 5+ save.

Theres a pretty long DE tactics thread that is going on pretty strong in the tactics section if anyone is interrested

I really do love your scheme, and I am very excited to see how the bloodbride turns out!

That's actually some pretty good advice, thank you. And yeah, Disintegrators look like a good choice on Raiders, since they'll end up jinking more often than not

Got any pictures of the new Blood Bride?

@Gummyofallbears: Yeah Hellions aren't impressive in any real way, they lack anything that they can do that something else can't do better. Want poison shots? Kabalites are cheaper and better, want fast moving unit? Reavers are faster and more survivable (jink+toughness and skilled rider I think). Want some melee power? Reavers once again have caltrops. The only time my hellions impressed me were when I rolled +1strength on the drug table. It was turn 4 and I charged with all 5, 3str base +1 for glaive +1 for drug and +1 for furious charge meant Str6 hellions bearing down. It was hilarious but they're still AP 5 I think and don't have very many attacks. In short, awesome models, disappointing rules. Thank you sir for liking the Bloodbride scheme, that makes me glad.

@War Kitten: Indeed I do! Just finished up the second Bloodbride this afternoon.

Edit: I see in the photo I got a dab of seraphim sepia wash on my Bloodbrides leg while washing the base. I'll have to correct that.

Looking awesome I_F.


I can't wait to see a full squad of these hekatrii!

I like how the pink is not too prevalent on the model, but it still seems to match very well with the rest of your force!

Thank you very much Gummy. I feel there's just enough things tying these into my main force as for them to be unique without seeming like they're taken from a different force all together. It's a balancing act but I feel I achieved it. We'll see once all five are done and I put them on display with the rest of my force if that holds up

The squad is going to look amazing when they're done! I'm assuming the scheme is for your own custom Kabal/Cult? I've yet to have the time to go through the rest of the blog so I don't know