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Back in second edition I had a small Eldar army (which I wish I still had as I loved the metal guardians, Dark Reapers and Scorpions!). At the start of 3rd I had a small Dark Eldar army too as I was working in the store when it came out. The models weren't so good back then, but the more recent kits were (and still are) really nice to work with. When they originally came out I managed to sate my appetite by painting some Scourges for Arakasi



The recent codex release rumours and models sparked the idea to do a Ynnari force as I'd enjoyed the Gathering Storm storyline. A few nights spent trawling Instant-gran sparked lots of ideas that led to far too many purchases and the start of small forces for Drukhari, Craftworlds and Harlequins! Given that I havn't played 40k in years this still bemuses me... but the models are really nice and the ideas are flowing freely. Mostly... colours seem to be the thing that is holding me back at the moment. That and general distraction with work...

I know Arakasi is having similar delays in painting his Orks and was threatening to put up a dedicated Ork thread... so I've challenged him to see each other motivated and pushing forward with out projects. I'll link his thread here once he's put it up

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So where am I at with the Eldar to date? I still really like the Ynnari backstory that appeared ages ago, but the new codex is a bit disappointing in it's lack of story progression and the lacklustre, craftworld focussed army options that don't match the fluff... so I'm building what I want and lists be damned!

In terms of colour schemes, I had a play with one test wych... which seemed to go fairly well. I wanted to see what the colours would look like on other unit types though, so here's a potatoshop along side the test model




I can't decide between the bright bright orange of the test model or the ochre colour of the image... I seem to have that yellowy colour in almost every army I paint somehow... even on the computer where I'm not picking up the same paints! I do quite like the gradient from dark feet to near white armour at the top. I'm going to need to dig out the airbrush and do a big batch undercoating everything with a gradient if I go with that style!

Overview:
Wych squad 1 (Initial post | Final)

Ooh, new plog. In love with the ochre, honestly.

I thought those Scourge looked familiar... Gee, you didn't waste any time getting this thread up did you? I'll have to get a move along...

Personally I like the ochre, though either way it might look more bold and consistent if the Wych's hair and tabard matched that ochre or orange.

I like the fade. And put me down for a vote for ochre.

 Arakasi wrote:
I thought those Scourge looked familiar... Gee, you didn't waste any time getting this thread up did you? I'll have to get a move along...

Hey, I sat on this for at least a day or so before hitting post

So Ochre it is then! It feels like I use it all the time, but looking back through the gallery, the last time it was used for more than small details was my old old Guard for the helmets, or Claptrap... this makes me feel better about using it for these. Plus it's contrast, so should just go straight over the gradient for extra interest.

To start the thread proper, I'm going to step through the things I've built so far, one a day and talk about where the parts came from, what is still to do and what is next, to try and build up a bookmark/status update thingy in the first post as I work my way towards figuring out what I have. For those that have followed the other plog, there will be repeats of photos in this initial run, but it'll soon get past that! At some point I'll start looking at some inital lists using them all, but that's a way away and not really the point of the project yet.

First up are the wyches.




(I need to take photos of the remaining members of this squad as those don't appear to have made it here yet! I'll update this when I remember)

These are a combination of Namarti Reaver bodies and Drukhari wych arms and heads to give them a slightly different look to the standard kit. At least in the first batch, the male torsos are standard wyches, with the female ones becoming potential Blood brides (that's a later post) if I want to run them; though internet lists seem to be running Trueborn instead, which is lucky as I've built some of those too. I've built up 5 with the basic weapons, plus one of the spear/net and one of the chain-thing (gee I'm good with remembering the names!). They are intended to be a small squad that can ride around in a Venom and pester people.

There's some green stuff that still needs doing on their backs as the Namarti are designed to effectively be monopose. The arms fit in specific places with muscles interlocking properly and the back designed to lock into the quivers (Namarti Reavers are archers in AoS). Because of this I'm having to reconstruct the backs so they don't look terrible from behind. I undercoated and started to paint a couple over the weekend, only to find that I'd undercoated ones that still needed work doing to them *face/palm*. Probably just as well though as the gradient effect that the photoshop trials came up with will be much nicer than straight forward dark grey legs.

I was thinking about the gradient last night, and we're going to have to imagine that the gradient is due to some sort of colour shift on the suits as I'm not messing around airbrushing individual arms to get the matching gradient... complete models or nothing!

Shortly before the rather nice models were revealed for the new Corsairs, I'd just finished assembling a unit of Kabalites that were intended to double up as Trueborn. I'm now having second thoughts about that and may end up cutting the arms off to make a second set of Corsairs if there are enough spare parts left over from that kit



Speaking of... I'm less than impressed with the two places that I've been ordering from recently (no names). Guardians ordered way back when the codex came out still havn't turned up as they forgot... and the Kill Team box with Corsairs was supposedly posted last tuesday (way after it should have been posted given the release date), only to find out that it was actually posted on friday afternoon (after I'd queried and offered to come pick it up as I was in the area) and won't be delivered until about Thursday! The shop is only 15 miles from where I live... god knows where the courier is taking it! *sigh*

Anyway. Should have some Corsair plastics to play with soon.

Over the weekend I had every intention of doing some painting and to try out the gradient effect . Looking back, I probably should have tried a test model first as the new airbrush already needs dismantling/cleaning as the airflow through it is terrible. After about 2 minutes of very clean paint flow (vallejo airbrish undercoat), paint/air flow slowly decreased to the point that nothing was coming out, even after the nozzle etc. were thoroughly cleaned. This means that a couple of the models have a nice clean gradient for the greys, but others are all patchy/splotchy where it started alternating between no paint and spitting. *sigh*

On a different note, the other thing that undercoating/painting things did remind me about is I need to do some 3d modelling before I can carry on with the Wraith Guard, Wraithlord, Dark Reapers, Inkubi and war walker. I'm trying to make it so there is thematic similarities between craftworld and drukhari, so I want to create a back piece that is half way between the smooth craftworld spines and the jagged, blade like back pieces that the Drukhari characters have. I wanted to try and use the 3d scanner that my wife has at work, but they don't yet have a computer powerful enough to run it. The plan was to scan the drukhari ones and just scale them up... time to try and do it the hard way

The other set of Kabalites has been created using most of the kabalite kit, but with the bird helmets from the Scourge kits and the backs from the Warhammer elf Shadow Warriors



These were the original trueborn that I put together. I may revert back to them being so and redoing the ones above to be a second unit of Corsairs as they do look piratical. If I do that I need to work out what to do for normal kabalites.

Aaaanyway. I finally found some time to play with one of the few airbrushed figures. It's a little grainy in the photos but seems to look fine in person




I sort of like it, but the gradient armour just looks... poorly shaded rather than a gradient. I can't tell if it is just that it needs more contrast in the shading, of if I'm being too picky? If the gradient remains I need to work out helmet and crest colours as the white feels like too much white.

Interestingly the bone rifle is my favourite part of this and was the simplest part to do!

Thanks to a long "listen only" meeting earlier I managed to catch up on some greenstuff work to progress some more of the eldar.

The Dark Reapers are mostly assembled, though I still can't work out what to do about heads and back vanes. None of the heads that come with them feel quite right, but none are so bad then are an auto-bin. What I really want are Rogue Trader era heads but I can't be bothered to try and convert 4 of those from Drukhari helmets and the vanes. It may come down to just trimming off the daft hair on the helmets and filling in the eyes/mouth for a blank face look. Still undecided.

The Exarch, however, is done and has some ragged robes to go with the hooded head. Half of them were streamers from the harlequin models; the rest are greenstuff to blend into the hood. He also has an Inkubi back vane to give a slightly more threatening look. I may add these to the other dark reapers, or I may look at sculpting a shoulder mounted targetter to go in the back. Not sure... Still a bit of line removal needed apparently, but looking nice.


I've also given him a flashback weapon... a web of skulls! My original metal one had one of those, so it felt right adding one back in here. Currently it's two chains and skulls... I may need to add another one or two for a proper web



The other bit of greenstuff work this morning was to add fluffy collars onto my three warlocks. Two are the new kits and one is the farseer on foot. All have had minor conversions for arms/heads/weapons. The collars are to move them towards Jes' early sketch of the warlock as that's one of my favourite pieces of art




The farseer is quite a bit smaller than the warlocks, so I've had to stand him on one of the bits of terrain to try and make him look about the same sort of height. It's really odd *quite* how different they are in stature. I still need to blank out their faces as well so they can have glossy black face plates

Very productive meeting love the furry hoods Maybe blank bone coloured face plates for the reapers?

I wish I had more meetings like that. It's the one downside to the new office is that I can't make terrain while listening to the calls any more

Yesterday I started cutting up the legs on my wraithlord to get a bit more motion in it. This evening on the sofa has led to some bits to print to make an incubi themed wraithlord. I'm not printing the body/rest... I just needed it to scale the head and back fins to properly

That has the potential to look very cool.

Thanks! Today’s task is to try cleaning/resetting the printer *Again* to see if I can print the wraithlord bits and to try and make a base for him so I can show off the leg pose a bit.

Looking at the colored pictures and the painted figures…. I am tempted to mirror the arm as most of the infantry have the left arm and chest plate hidden behind the guns. It may help to break up the wall of white too

Very excited to see this Wraithcubi, it should be very cool!

While waiting for some new resin to turn up, I started assembling some ynnari guardians. For these I've used wych heads to give them a slightly more vicious look and have been carving down the pouches/knives from leftover kabalite legs



I need to add a few more knives/pouches, and then do something to the front to make them a little bit more spikey


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Wraithcubi (I like that name!) is going to print tonight... so fingers crossed new resin, new build plate and thorough cleaning of the resin tank fix the printing issues I've been having... otherwise this printer may learn how to fly (very short distances)

Looking good and fingers crossed!

well there's progress on the 3d printing... but not masses... *some* of the bits printed fine; the rest didn't. The head and sword pulled off the printing plate about a 3rd of the way through. I think I need to up the exposure on the bottom layers a bit more as everything pulled off really easily. On the plus side I have three back banners for normal incubi and the back vanes for the wraithcubi to now work with while a second attempt gets done while I'm at work.

If that fails as well then the *last* thing is ordering yet another pre-FEPped tank. Despite using a couple of different guide templates that you can print out, I seem to rarely have much luck changing them :/

On an unrelated note my brain is an .......; it kept me awake for hours last night deciding which Heresy era chapter I wanted to make with the new edition box... despite the fact that I don't like painting space marines and don't play games much :/


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Dagnabbit. Even less of the plate stuck this time around... new tank it is then. At this point I could have just bought a new printer... almost. Anyway, at least I've got the blade printed as well now so I can finish the pose and leave the head until a bit later. Photos friday when I'm able to spend some time cleaning the bits up

A new tank seems to be doing the trick so far... the head is printing and hasn't fallen off *yet*... so clearly my fep wasn't right somehow.

Still some work to do on the Wraithcubi, but I'm really liking it so far



To add some extra armour and spikiness I used the hip plates left over from the Wraithguard to add armouring to the back and legs. The knees have some spikey bits also left over from the Wraithguard to make them look a little more like Incubi knee armour.

Things left to do include tidying up the knees/back and adding some chains/skulls to the back vanes. I now want to do a unit of Incubi style Wraith blades to go with it!

I've also started to have a play with a new way of doing the gradient on the figures



This was undercoated with Grey Seer, then a zenithal of white over the top. The bottom half was then given a wash with thinned grey contrast, then the bottom quarter was given another coat to make it darker. After that the top half was given a coat of the white contrast, overlapping with some of the grey to try and blend it down a bit.



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Oh, I forgot... I'd also printed a test back banner for the incubi as I want them to have banners rather than the standard vanes. The one on the left is the printed one; the one on the right is from the Kabalite kit. Which one do you think looks better?

Yeah the wraithcubi is looking excellent. I really need to get back into printing. I like your grey very much.

Oh yeah!


Can't wait to see this on the Wraithcubi tomorrow!

I concur with inmygravenimage, the wraithcubi is looking excellent - also can’t wait to see the printed head in place. As for the banners, I think the one on the right looks better / more imposing.

I think you are right above the banner. Sadly that means buying two more boxes of kabalites. At least the one on the left I can print as many as I want

I think if you put the one on the left a little higher, perhaps by mounting it on a rod, it'd be the best option.

I did a bit of tweaking on the back banner, including putting a blob at the bottom to make it easier to stick to the back of the figures (I hope!)



I stretched it in height and squashed it a bit to make it a little shallower. Hopefully this will have the height of the plastic banner, but the more spikey look of the original resin one.

And, of course, the wait is over...

Oh that's a brilliant, nasty piece. Great job.

I think I'm going to need a few more angles to fully appreciate the Wraithcubi . Also, tweaked banner looks promising.

I love the kitbashing nature of this thread, absolutely awesome stuff!

Finally got to do a bit of work on some guardians now the basic scheme is working.



These were undercoated in grey, then sprayed white from above. The legs (waist down) where then coated in a diluted grey contrast and then the bottom half of the legs got a second coat of undiluted grey. The higher up armoured leg plates were then touched up with Administratum grey, with the bottom ones being highlighted in the same. The top was given a coat of white contrast. The top leg plates and the white where all edged in white. Yellow contrast over the arm/chest area. Bone over the equipment.

All in all, it was quite quick as cycling around 5 figures meant that the first was dry when I came back around

There is still skin, hair and some details to finish... but not too bad!

I agree, lovely speed paints.