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Looking good as usual Jon - those colours really work well together.

Quick Christmas Eve update before the festivities. I ordered a PACK Air case from Battlefoam during the Black Friday Sale (shipping fees for bulky items to Hong Kong are pretty rough otherwise) but it''s taken me a month to settle on exactly what I wanted. I've heard that you can just send them your model traces and that they would take case of it but playing with the tray creator was kind of fun.

I just sent an email with the details of my order in, so fingers crossed that they can do this. If it works I'll have managed to fit a whole 2000 point tournament army, plus an extra 200 points or so to swap out, into a case that can be carried onto a plane. That's including 12 vehicles (3 Venoms, 6 Raiders and 3 Ravagers)! It doesn't hold everything I've got but sometime down the line I'll be getting separate trays for my Hellions and Reavers to swap in and out.

Thought some of you might find these tray designs to be useful references, keeping in mind that I've gone for larger cutouts than is usual because of my bulkier bases.

Merry Christmas!

thats sweet! I love battlefoam!

Finished painting the crew this morning, glued them to the Raider, and took it down to the FLGS for a game and some photos! Here are the two best. Jobs a good ún!





In my hurry to finish the Raider for my game against fellow Dakka member CalasTyphon216, I forgot to take in progress photos for the tutorial! However, there actually wasn't anything complicated happening in between the last set of photos and the completed Raider. First I weather all the pieces using MIG powders, spray them with matte varnish, and assemble the Raider (all these steps are described earlier in the thread). Then I paint the "dot" pattern on the sails and weather them. The "dot" pattern is just that, a random pattern of dots painted in successively lighter colors (again described with photos earlier in the thread). The crew are attached last.

The Raider did what it was supposed to during its debut game against CalasTyphon216, delivering Sara and her Incubi into a squad of Plague Marines. However it then got stolen by the two surviving members of a Warrior squad, who went on to immobilize it in terrain the following turn. I said it was like some teenagers had taken their parent's luxury car for a joyride and crashed it!

I keep having a play with the battlefoam tray creator, but keep coming unstuck working out the best configuration for what I want to add to the army... it is good fun though.

The new raider looks great. Apart from the joyriding Warriors, how did the rest of the game go?

I love the color scheme, the teal is so clean and your metals are excellent.

He trashed me pretty badly, by the end of turn 5 i had 2 immobilised rhinos left
Just wasn't used to coping with so many dark lances (17 in 1750 points i think)

That raider looks really great, love the way the sails contrast well against the other colours.

The Raider Looks Fantastic! Glad to hear it did well-ish. How did Sara do? Is there maybe a battle report or at least some pics of the game for us here on dakka? Cant wait for the next update.

endtransmission wrote:I keep having a play with the battlefoam tray creator, but keep coming unstuck working out the best configuration for what I want to add to the army... it is good fun though.
The new raider looks great. Apart from the joyriding Warriors, how did the rest of the game go?

I find myself occasionally pressing Ctrl-Z (Undo) while using the Tray Creator. That function would really help!

The game was good fun overall against a great opponent. Super quick summary of the highlights as follows:

We were playing a Nova Open style mission (Quarters, Objectives, Kill Points). CalasTyphon216 was playing Chaos Space Marines and had the first turn.

The first couple turns had me a bit worried as Sara and her Incubi almost bounced off a unit of Plague Marines. I only killed one on the charge and luckily made my saves and only lost one Incubi in return. I also had a hard time finishing off Obliterators, there were a couple hanging around for the next few turns with one wound happily exploding my paper aeroplanes. I charged the Beastmaster unit into another Plague Marine squad on turn two and they got stuck. However, the Incubi incredibly shredded the rest of the Plague Marines (with the help of some Fearless wounds).

Turn three saw the arrival of the Terminator death-star (I think they blew something up with Reaper autocannons). Unluckily for CalasTyphon216 his luck with saves deserted him in my shooting phase, never to return this game. The terminators had the Mark of Tzeentch (4+ invulnerable save), but instead of passing 50% saves against Darklight weapons I think he passed about 2 out of 10 over the next couple turns. I remember that one of the couple times he passed an invulnerable save he lost another terminator from a failed 2+ save. The Razorwings, perhaps inspired by the Incubi, killed 5 Plague Marines with rending wounds during turn three's assault phase.

Then honestly, from turn 4 on it was mostly me rotating around the surviving bits of his army picking stuff off, with the occasional thing being blown up by obliterators until I got the last one.

CalasTyphon216 wrote:He trashed me pretty badly, by the end of turn 5 i had 2 immobilised rhinos left
Just wasn't used to coping with so many dark lances (17 in 1750 points i think)

I thought you were a great opponent. Two things that stood out, you played at a good pace and you didn't give up when things weren't going your way. Wouldn't hesitate to have another game anytime!

Great memory! It was exactly 17. I was playing my relatively close combat focused list. The shooty variant has 25 Dark Lances! I take so many because I find it incredibly frustrating not being able to so anything against tanks. To apply some mathhammer it takes, on average, about 18 Dark Lances to kill an armor 12 vehicle in cover (12/18 hit, 6/12 penetrate, 3/6 get through cover saves, 1/3 results on chart destroy vehicles). Before I played against you I got massacred by a marine army with six twin-autocannon dreadnoughts. Admittedly my luck was abominable, I shot 15 Dark Lances at a dreadnought in the open and did...nothing. My opponent mentioned that I was probably going to roll over my next opponent since the luck had to even out. I told him that my next game was against someone who had come from overseas and I didn't want to demolish them with dice rolls!

@mekbadzappa & monkeyh: Thanks! I remember the first time I painted a Raider I felt like it took forever. Probably because I was trying out the scheme. Now I see that I can paint one really comfortably in two weeks time and I could probably do one in a weekend if I concentrated!

@BossSlurpee: Thanks! As you've seen I did a drive by recap above. No pics because although I had told myself to bring my camera, I was so focused on getting the Raider done and packed properly (since I had to bring it to work on a packed subway), I forgot the camera!

Hey Jon, I love the shots of your models in the terrain! it really brings them to life! I am actually going to attempt the sails on my raiders in a similar style to yours after reading your tute on them (I hope i can do something similar in quality!) I felt my own needed a shot of colour wthout going ott and the sails you do are a great blend of subtlety and vibrancy that only accentuate the style and purpose of the mini's!

What else do you possibly have to paint for the army? it appears after all these pages you've nearly got all your army completed!

whatever you do next i'm sure will be fantastic!

Nerdfest09

Just had a glance back through most of your blog. First time reader but love the work you have done!

Love to have another game against you
You were fantastic, and it is an honor to play against such well painted minis

@nerdfest09:

I felt my own needed a shot of colour wthout going ott and the sails you do are a great blend of subtlety and vibrancy that only accentuate the style and purpose of the mini's!

That's the best summary of what I was going for I've seen! The "dot" method is very forgiving as if you make a mistake you can just paint over the dot with the basecoat color and try again. Post some pics if you try the method!

What else do you possibly have to paint for the army? it appears after all these pages you've nearly got all your army completed!

whatever you do next i'm sure will be fantastic!

There's actually still quite a number of Dark Eldar miniatures I haven't touched, despite the length of this thread! New mini's I've bought but not painted include Wracks, Wyches and the Razorwing Jetfighter. Mini's I haven't bought yet include Mandrakes, the Talos and the Court miniatures. I've also got another Raider and Venom, as well as more Trueborn, Incubi, Scourges, Hellions and Reaver Jetbikes that need paint at some point. So there's definitely enough bare plastic, metal and Finecast to keep this blog going for some time yet!

@runmymouth: Welcome to the Kabal of the Drowned Gardens! We hope that you'll be with us for a long, long stay. Can we offer you any...refreshments? (That's how I'd imagine the recruiting pitch for potential future Wracks going.)

@CalasTyphon216: Let me know when you're back in town again!

It seems to be a recurring theme - a lone obliterator or two surviving for ages and making a nuisance of themselves.

I know in one of my games against a chaos army out of his 3 squads of 2 obliterators in the first turn I managed to kill 1 with a hex rifle (turned to glass), 2 with lance fire and one with splinterfire, the next 2 turns, 1 goes down to liquifier guns and hex rifle fire, and 1 makes about 20 standard saves and 10 invun, then on turn 4 proceeds to eat the combined firepower of a razorwing, 2 venoms a talos and 2 raiders (at this point I was starting to hold a grudge against it) and only take a single wound. Thing was ridiculous and most certainly man of the match.

The sun happened to be shining through some terrain in my FLGS and I decided to take some photos on a whim. The first one of Sara emerging from the shadows actually turned out to be really atmospheric! I just noticed that you can see her shadow, showing the spine mutation, when I was editing the photo to upload. It's a neat detail and I'm sure there's an appropriate metaphor in there somewhere but I'm too tired to attempt anything literary tonight!



Here's another shot I took in more normal lighting. It shows off the mini quite nicely. For me this is one of those rare mini's where you look at it and sometimes there's this split second feeling of "I can't quite believe I painted that"!



@Ovion: I had a similar experience with an Eldar Exarch on a Jetbike with a Fusion Gun. He survived two turns of fire from 1/3 of my Guard army. This included about 10 instant death meltagun or mutilaser wounds! 2/3 of those turns he also wrecked a vehicle. The game ended with him still alive stuck in combat against the survivors to two veteran squads (I was definitely holding a grudge against him at that point).

I know what you mean about the split second recognision. You step back and take a look at your handy work and the words "Holy Poo, how the hell?!" pop in your head and you start grinning to yourself. Apparently, thats what i did when i was really proud of a model i painted anyway. It is an awesome model and paintjob. And your army is Epic.

One quick question, i may have missed it, but what colours for the green glowing effects on runes etc?

@S'jet: So that feeling wasn't just me then! Because of what you said I just went and took a look at your recent posts and Gallery images. The gold on those Sisters is a really nice finish! That test scheme on your Wyche also looks very promising but I'll post more in your thread instead of here.

You were in store today? I must have just missed you

S'jet wrote:I know what you mean about the split second recognision. You step back and take a look at your handy work and the words "Holy Poo, how the hell?!" pop in your head and you start grinning to yourself.

I feel like that alot

Last post of 2011!

I couldn't decide exactly what I wanted to do next so I figured that I'd put together another Raider first so I have options when I play larger games. This one may not get completely painted before I move onto a new shiny, my immediate goal is to get it to state where it stays together on the table!

I was going to be lazy and just build it the normal way, but I liked the two sailed version so much that I decided to put in the extra effort. In the few games I played during the past few weeks I've found that having a couple distinctive looking Raiders really helps me remember what's got what in it! The dual sails are also good for having WYSIWYG for Enhanced Aethersails.

So, now that's I'm doing this for the second time I think I've come up with a better method. You'll need an extra "masts and controls" bit for this conversion. Shouldn't be hard to find on bitz sites since I don't think it's in high demand (at least until this tutorial gets out ).

Here are some photos of the WIP conversion with the steps afterwards:



1. Separate the two "masts" by cutting the rod (with the hanging chain) that join them.
2. Clean up one of the masts using a modelling knife to remove any remaining bits of rod. You can keep the other mast for another conversion.
3. Cut the cleaned mast at the thickest part of its "bulge." Keep the top part of the mast and throw away the bottom part.
4. Sand the cut surface flat.
5. Scrape out a notch in the bottom of the truncated mast bit, this will allow this bit to sit on top another "mast and controls"assembly.
6. Assemble the second set of "masts and controls"as normal.
7. Test fit the truncated mast bit on top of the "masts and controls" assembly, you will probably have to scrape out the notch some more, and stick it when you're happy with the fit.



8. Use putty or greenstuff to cover the gap and leave overnight to dry.
9. Sand the putty smooth.

I'm still at the "leave overnight to dry stage"so this conversion won't be finished until next year!

@CalasTyphon216: I wasn't in the store that day, I was looking through some extra photos I took with the Raider photos and thought these two were particularly good. I've been hearing about your games with other people here!

@Capitansolstice: That a good thing right?

And with that:

Wishing all of you a Happy New Year from Hong Kong!

Nice little tute there jon, might have to steal that one for my self.

The second two sailed Raider is coming along nicely. After putting 8 Raider hulls together it seems that I've gotten pretty good at it. However this will be the last boat out of the shipyard since I've now built all the Raiders I'll ever need for games. Speaking of which, I just played a game against a fully mech IG army where I failed to destroy even a single vehicle! This included several instances where I put several Dark Lance shots into the side of a Chimera only to roll all 1's for the pen rolls. Neither myself nor my opponent could really believe it. Time to change the batteries on my Darklight weapons!

Tech Guard wrote:Nice little tute there jon, might have to steal that one for my self.

Give it a go!

Hi Jon, looking good as we all expect with your amazing army of sadistic killers! I need to thank you for your inspiration with my own DE army, seeing you work keeps me trying to get mine painted quickly, and as such i used your tute for the sails recently, i didn't follow it exactly but you can tell where i got inspired from! i'll pop a link so you can check it out at your lesiure? http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/690/356350.page it was actually quite fun to paint them and was quicker than I thought it would be, and of course the end result is a great looking sail that adds a spot of colour and a great focal point for the raiders/ravagers so thanks for showing us dude!

Can't wait to see more!

Nerdfest09

Rolling lots of ones Jon? I feel your pain my friend, you are not alone - when I battle, if we were playing 'see who can roll most ones in a game' I would be the master.

Mechanicum Jon wrote:Speaking of which, I just played a game against a fully mech IG army where I failed to destroy even a single vehicle! This included several instances where I put several Dark Lance shots into the side of a Chimera only to roll all 1's for the pen rolls. Neither myself nor my opponent could really believe it. Time to change the batteries on my Darklight weapons!

I know that feeling...

Shot at a bunch of SW Rhinos and Razors all game, accomplished a single weapon destroyed by the bottom of turn 6. He basically looked at my vehicles and they caught on fire

Still won though. Thank god for last minute contesting!

So, there's this fuzzy rumor on the News and Rumors page that GW is going to change their paints in some way. I'm just back from my local FLGS where I bought out their stock (admittedly it was only six pots). While I don't necessarily put too much stock in the rumor, why risk running dry on the Devlan Miracle? I was starting to run low anyway as you can see from the pot in back.



@Warboss Gutrip and Monkeyh: The possibility of infinite shake/stun results (especially when a Rhino or other cheap vehicle absorbs more than half your army's shooting) is one of the few things I would really like changed in the game. There are definitely some other issues with 40k but that's one of the few things that has the potential to really annoy me in what is otherwise my favorite edition of the game by far.

LOL!!! I went to my FLGS to buy all of their hawk turquoise, but they said someone already did...Off to the battle bunker!

O damn it Jon you beat me to the Devlan mud
I've only got 2 1/2 pots of it and I go through it like an Australian goes through beer......

Capitansolstice wrote:LOL!!! I went to my FLGS to buy all of their hawk turquoise, but they said someone already did...Off to the battle bunker!

If I relied on a particular color for my army I'd probably be buying a few pots of it too! Fortunately my Dark Eldar use mixed colors from other companies. I remember having lots of trouble years ago when GW switched away from the Cote D'arms paints and completely changed the shade of green that Dark Angels Green was. It was years before I found out that 1. the old paint line was made by Cote D'arms and 2. you could buy the old colors, and I had gone on a hiatus from 40k by then!

CalasTyphon216 wrote:O damn it Jon you beat me to the Devlan mud
I've only got 2 1/2 pots of it and I go through it like an Australian goes through beer......

I asked the staff and they said that they would get more in stock next week. I'll race you for 'em! But really, I'm ok for now and won't be buying too much more unless the rumor pans out (or will it be too late since confirmation of the rumor will trigger a wave of panic buying?).

Also, you've made me think of doing Devlan Mud shots. The pots are about the right size...