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Hello DakkaDakka,

I've been a lurker for a long time, and some of you may have seen some of my stuff over at B&C, like my old Imperial Fists thread: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showtopic=229961 , and I figured this would be a good place to finally get to work on my space elf fascination.

I've been in the 40k game since 3rd, and I've always loved the look of the Eldar, especially the Saim-Hann armies. Is it any wonder with the bright red and black stripe paint scheme that it's almost always Saim-Hann armies that get the big spreads in the magazines and army books? Over the years, as I gathered and built marines, traitor marines, and even a Tau army that I sold off, I would pick up little bits of Eldar stuff here and there, mostly from ads on Bartertown. Since I was in no rush to build the army, it allowed me to pick and choose and wait for really good deals. It wasn't until recently when I started to do an inventory of all my toy soldiers, as I need to pare down some of the models I know I will never get around to building, and realized that I had much, much more Eldar stuff for a Saim-Hann army than I thought. At the moment, I can put my hands on 44 jetbikes, 7 Vypers, 3 Falcons, and 1 Fire Prism, all unbuilt, and that's just the flying stuff! I know I have a few more jetbikes in various stages of assembly and another Vyper kicking around somewhere.

Now, to complicate things and hopefully make this blog more interesting, I will be converting all of the jetbikes. Initially, I'm going to plan on doing about 24-25 so I can have 4 groups of 6 with some options.

Converting them how, you might ask? Well, I've never been a fan of the Harley Davidson look of the jetbikes with the tall handlebars and the Vaul's Angels leather jackets the drivers come with, and have been rather jealous of the sleeker, faster look to the crotch rocket-like Dark Eldar bikes. When the new DE line came out, I began to seriously think about using bits from their Reavers to convert my jetbikes. As it turned out, I ended up buying quite a lot of Dark Eldar, and may start working on them in this thread at a later point. Anyway, last week, I finally decided to steal some pieces off my Reaver frames to see what I could do with them. I tried to keep the DE pieces to a minimum as I will have to buy the conversion pieces from a Bits seller, and I think what I came up with worked rather well.

But enough talk! On with the pictures!




After a couple hours of test-fitting, cutting(I cut my thumb twice... new X-Acto blades are SHARP, kids!), cursing, and generally wondering if I had gotten myself in over my head, this was the result I was sort of happy with. I decided not to go with the jet thruster on the back, not only to save money in bits, but while I wanted the bikes to look similar to the DE versions, I didn't want it to look like I just dropped the "hood"(or bonnet, for you non-Americans) of an Eldar bike onto a DE model. Plus, I think the thrusters and vanes from the Eldar bike have a very iconic feel to them and wanted to keep them on somehow. Note that some parts are on a bit crooked because at this stage, it's mostly held together with blue tac or a few tiny drops of super glue and kept falling apart on me while I tried to get photos.

As it was late at this point, I came back to it the following morning and decided a few things needed to change. First and foremost was that trying to get the pedals from the Eldar bike to fit on the DE chassis was a massive PITA. So much so that I decided I would just go ahead and use the DE bit for my conversions. Not only did it look better(the regular pedals are HUGE and look strange on the DE chassis), but the extra money it would take to buy 1 more bit for each bike versus the amount of work and frustration it would take to make the Eldar pedals look good would be worth it. I also didn't like the big empty space beneath the handlebars and behind the guns where the DE gun would normally go, so I moved the shuricats back and like the look a lot better.

Here's a pic of my second go at it:




MUCH better! I really think it still has the feel of the Eldar jetbikes and with the driver and moving the guns further back, it really helps disguise the Dark Eldar chassis.

After those pics, I took a break to do a little Googling of Eldar jetbike conversions to check out what other people had done and see if there were any ideas I might pick up for additions or changes to make. It was then I saw the old "prototype" photos that have been around for years and that I had honestly forgotten about it. When I pulled one up for a better look, my jaw just about hit the floor.




It's the SAME chassis, lol! It makes me wonder, was this originally planned as a new Eldar model and then they decided to use the bones for the DE, or, based on the different colors of materials in the pic, was it just a conversion idea Jes Goodwin had? Either way, it made me smile seeing that.

So, I've ordered some bits and some magnets and will get to work on converting up all these jetbikes and giving my hovertanks swappable weapons once the goods arrive. In the meantime, I've started getting some small squads ready for the few foot troops I might have. First up is some Fire Dragons, of course.

All of the pointy ears in the army will share the same Saim-Hann scheme to one degree or another, with red body and white helm. There might be a few exceptions here and there, but I want the army to look like a cohesive whole than, say, the eye bleeding shock of a Biel-Tan Aspect Warrior army. So, my Fire Dragons, for example, will have reddish armor with a bit more orange to it and the white helms. I'm considering a fade on the crest of the helm from white on the bottom through yellow, orange, and finally red at the top, but we'll see how it goes. Here's the volunteer for the test paint scheme, just basecoated for now:




I'm using an airbrush for basecoating, and it looks like I didn't get the tape on the back of the helm as secure as I thought. Ah well.

Also, if anyone has some suggestions for photographing red, PLEASE let me know. I thought it was bad trying to get pics of my mustard yellow Imperial Fists, but I have to do a ton of fiddling with Photoshop to get the colors even close to what they really are.

If you got this far, thanks for reading!

Questions, comments, and criticism are welcome, and I mean the criticism part honestly. If you see room for improvement or want to suggest sometihng, please let me know. If you think it sucks, let me know as well, but at least tell my why you think that.

-BCK

Hey, my Biel Tan army looks cohesive too.

Anyway, glad to have another Eldar blog on here. You've made the jetbike kit look great! Can't wait to see more paint on them.

Swordwind wrote:Hey, my Biel Tan army looks cohesive too.

Anyway, glad to have another Eldar blog on here. You've made the jetbike kit look great! Can't wait to see more paint on them.

Glad you like the conversion! It does have some paint on it, but I'm still fiddling with paint mixes and stuff and I'll definitely post painted pics once I nail down the colors.

I have seen some Biel-Tan armies where they used the army colors for the Aspect troops, similar to what I'm doing here, but that comment was inspired by a guy I used to play against with Blood Angels years ago when I first got into the hobby. I don't know what kinds of paint he was using, but I swear they were neon or day-glow or something. If I looked directly at his figures for too long, I'd get retina shadows in my vision.

A little more work on the Fire Dragon test scheme:




Still struggling with the red in the photos. It's more vibrant and the highlights are much brighter IRL.

-BCK

As I mentioned previously, I plan on having a selection of troops to carry around in my mostly mobile army, and will probably be Fire Dragons, Striking Scorpions, and Howling Banshees.

Here we have a test paint scheme of a 2nd Ed Striking Scorpion that I did some years ago:





I still like the general idea of the scheme for this Saim-Hann army, but it will probably be a dark red or red/brown color fading to black. And I have to say, I think these are probably my favorite versions of the Scorps. The newest ones I like, but an issue I have with a lot of the newer Eldar aspect figures is that they are too busy - too much extraneous detail and junk. I much prefer the sleek, clean lines of the older figures. However, the older figures are getting hard to come by, and they are quite a bit smaller than the new stuff I have so, what's a guy to do?

Bust out the X-Acto, files, and sandpaper of course:




One of the things I like least about the new Scorps is those raised edges all over the place. Here's a bit of a before/after, although they are different figures as I forgot to take an actual 'before' shot of the one I was working on. Anyway, you can see where I cut away those raised edges on the shoulders, shins, butt(not pictured), and the crotch.

Yes, the crotch.

Really? Did attention need to be drawn to the banana hammock by the sculptor?

I also removed the gems from the sides of the helm and the armor plates on the back of the legs. I removed them from the helm just so they'd have a cleaner look, but the terrible mold lines kinda necessitated that they be removed from the lower leg armor. And these are the replacements that I was sent by GW because the first box I bought was pretty much unusable.

There's still a few things to do on this guy before I try out some paint on him, but I like the smoother look to his armor. A subtle change, but a nice one, imo.

You might notice a difference in the pics in this post, as I tried a new set up with the background and lights, and think it's it an improvement. It also seems to help me get a little closer to the actual red color of my models. Here's another look at the Fire Dragon:




As always, C&C welcome.

-BCK

Love the jetbike! The firedragon also looks very nice and crisp.

Thanks! I can't wait for the bits order to get in so I can start cranking out the bikes.

I'm still not happy with the photos of my painted stuff, including ones I tried to take of the jetbike. The orange highlights on that Fire Dragon are just completely washed out in the pic.

I've had a few delays in progress lately, but yesterday and today I was able to get in some work on magnetizing the first of my 3 grav tanks. I want them to be as modular as possible and be able to not only switch heavy weapon load outs on the Falcon, but also to change over to a Fire Prism.

First up was the turrets:




For the hole in the top of the tank, I first glued down a thin piece of sheet plastic on the underside, and then glued in a perfectly sized 1/4" x 1/16" magnet. For the manned turret, I pushed a piece of plastic rod through the top side and glued it in as a spacer for a 1/8" x 1/16" magnet and then glued that one in. Beneath the pilot on the underside of the tank, I put a piece of sheet plastic over the hole where the TL shuricat turret goes and glued in another 1/8" x 1/16" magnet. I had a little accident and squeezed out way too much glue, so I had to scrape some of it away to make it flat again.

Now knowing that I wanted to be able to put the very large and very heavy metal Fire Prism pieces on here, I didn't think using the normal connecting rod that comes with the model would suffice if I just chopped a little off each end and glued a magnet on. I found I had some plastic tubing that fit the 1/8" magnets perfectly. It took a fair amount of measuring and trimming of plastic, but here was the result:





Next up was the weapons. The pulse laser had a spacer on it already, so I just drilled that out and dropped in a magnet. For the other weapons, I created a short spacer from the same tubing and glued 1/8" x 1/32" magnets in. On the other side of weapons, I glued in a piece of plastic rod so the armor plate can fit on:





When it came time to work on the Fire Prism pieces, as I feared, they were too heavy for the magnets to hold up by themselves. I even trimmed some of the extraneous pieces off them to see about saving a little weight and to keep them from contacting the top of the tank, but they were still too heavy. The solution was to mount two small pins in each one, and you can see the holes I drilled in the second pic above. They're pretty much invisible once the weapons are attached:




Now to get the other 2 tanks done.

-BCK

I love that Scorpion. Looks very similar to mine, just better.

Thanks!

I didn't see any scorps in your gallery pics. Do you have some posted?