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INTRODUCTION

Thanks for checking out my newest 40k foray and my second plog!

I had a great experience making my first plog, The Corespur Elite - Building a Better Dark Eldar Army, http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/402942.page , while documenting the creation of my dark eldar army both at the hobby desk and on the battlefield. I knew that when I started another army, I should create a new plog to document its development. So here we are!

THE HISTORY

About 5 years ago, after a few years without a lot of 40k in my life, I decided to get back into the hobby and came to my brother with a proposal. I would paint his Eldar army (one of two or three armies had at the time, mostly still grey) if we could have joint ownership of it. He agreed, as he wasn’t using them much at the time anyways.


A couple of my old Eldar models that I currently have with me. I’ve developed as a painter since and want to do a different scheme with my new Eldar.

So I would paint a lot on my college breaks at home, and eventually finished about 1500 points of fully painted eldar that I was pretty proud of. Cut to the present, my Eldar sit in a closet at my parents house, and I begin the preparations dust them off, strip their paint, and remake a new 6th edition eldar army with the new codex.

THE PLOG

This mutual interest of ours has two sides; the hobby and the game. Enthusiasts run the full spectrum between the gamer who takes all grey armies to tournaments to the collector who accrues models but doesn’t care for the game. I lie near the summit of the bell curve as I am equally into both aspects of 40k. So this, just like my last plog, will not only be a place for me to document my hobbying progress and gather opinions and suggestions; it will also be a place for me to sculpt my army lists and discuss their performance on the table.

THE PALLET

I found the inspiration for my Dark Eldar’s color scheme in a Storm of Magic gaming table featured in some of GW’s pictures in that release. The inspiration for my Eldar’s paint scheme has an even stranger origin.

When thinking of color combinations to use for my new Eldar army, I remembered a Lego set that I had seen online recently called the Emerald Night (google it if you wish). I remember liking how the green and baige work together (hints of dark angels), how the baige and black work together (hints of ulthwe), and how the brown worked with them.

Its been about a year since I’ve hobbied seriously, so I went out and got some of the new paints for my pallet, some accessories, and a box of Eldar Guardians, and set out to see what color combinations worked and what didn't. And here’s the culmination of my work over the last few days!


The progression of test guardians.

I won’t bother discussing the thoughts that lie in between each step, other than that the brown with the green made the guardian look too leafy and wood elfy, brown washes made the bone color look mustardry, and I tried a lot of different helmet colors in the pallet and didn’t like most of them.

THE PAINT SCHEME

I was having major doubts about the colors I chose until I made the last guardian. Basically I used inverted ulthwe colors where the majority of the model is baige and the weapons and select armor plates are black, and used green as the gemstone color instead of red.





I love the sort of lunar look that resulted, so much that I changed the base color to grey and am now considering doing moonscape bases. There are many directions I can take this and intend to go different ways for different aspects and such. Some could have much more black or green, and I will try to get the brown back into the army somewhere.

I also got a box of the new wraithguard on a whim, and I’m itching to assemble them and paint them. But, I’m not 100% sure if I want to glue them together, or try using magnets (something I haven’t done before) so I could change their loadout....

So, thanks again for checking out my new plog, and lemme know what you think!

PROGRESS

Howdy! Moar guardians!



PROSPECTS

Next I will paint the weapon platform, and perhaps attempt to salvage a couple of my test guardians, since some of them have the same baige undercoat.

I purchased a box of the new wraithguard but I haven't assembled them yet. I am not sure how I might want to load them out in the future, and I might hold off and magnet them eventually. But on the other hand, they're sweet as models, and d-scythes are just ridiculous, so I might assemble and paint them next.

As I mentioned before, I have an old eldar army scattered among various shelves in a couple states. With me I have 10 warp spiders, 10 scorpions and 6 rangers. Back home I have a few more scorpions, two squads of reapers, fire dragons, an avatar, a farseer and autarch, a couple wave serpents and a falcon. No one is sure if some of the older aspects will get new models eventually, and since warp spiders are crazy good, I'm glad I have some lying around that I can paint up and use. Same goes with the other aspects.

That being said, I think that my next project might be a wraithlord. For some reason I've been itching to pose and paint one for a while, and now I have a good reason to.

So, more to come! Thanks for stopping by!

UPDATE / WRAITHGUARD

Howdy! The other day I bought a box of the new wraithguard because I think they’re great models and my old old eldar army used to have a squad of them. I was thinking of waiting to assemble them until I got my hands on some magnets so I could switch their loadouts, but I was itching to assemble and paint them, so I just gave them d-scythes, because, why the hell not?



Wraithguard with d-scythes. Don’t ever charge them, and don’t ever let them get within template distance of you. Honestly one of the scarier units in 40k right now IMO.

Pretty straightforward to assemble, nicely posable. The box comes with TONS of bits also, great kit to buy. Lots of sweet axes and swords, plus a bunch of little Eldar doodads and such.

I made one simple conversion: trimming the shoulder of one gun so I could rest it on the leg, and adding a fist to the left arm, so that I could get a unique pose. It sort of came out as a combination of him surverying the battlefield and also him implying “come get some”.

As I said, I’ve been itching to paint these guys, so I went ahead and just finished one instead of conveyor line painting them. Here he is!


First painted wraithguard!

I again did the opposite of the ulthwe scheme. There is an ulthwe wraithguard in the codex display pages who is all black except for a beige head and gun. So, I did the opposite, and also painted all of the jewels instead of shading them and leaving them armor colored. The wraithguard are a bit too “bejeweled” in my opinion, but it looks pretty cool, and will set them apart from the lesser jeweled units.

I tried painting that freehand double-diamond thing that a lot of wraithguard have on their helmets, but didn’t like it, and much prefer the solid black ghostly look. But I did add the wraithguard rune to the loin cloth. I used Rinox Hide for the loin cloth, and I really like how it works with the baige and black and green. But I used Steel Legion Drab for the highlight and I think that might be a bit too bright.


Also, as you can see, he is based. I bought some of the grey GW texture paint and I like it. Its quick and easy, and gives a nice moonscape appearance. I just apply it, try to shape it a bit, highlight it and wash it, and its been turning out alright.

So, lemme know what you think! Hoping to get the other four done by the end of the weekend.

CODEX DISCUSSION

I haven’t posted any army lists or thoughts here, but I have been thinking about the codex a lot and trying to craft some lists. So instead of showing you what kind of lists I’ve been making, I decided I would just go through my favorite units in the new codex and say why!

AUTARCH

I really like this guy, but unfortunately they could have done soooo much more with this guy (why not options for executioner, scorpions claw, etc? what happened to that rumor that he would chose a aspect path and you could take that aspect as compulsory troops? that would have been epicly awesome). But, because of his reserves special rule, he’s perfect for leading a reserves army. I have thought of a few lists where I ally him with my dark eldar and run a webway portal / deep strike beta strike army. I also am very intrigued by the mantle of the laughing god autarch on a jetbike with either a fusion gun or the long rifle. Would be a very good thing unt have in an army that puts ~75%+ of itself in reserves, since wiping you off the table before your reserves come in will be much harder with a guy with a 2+ rerollable cover save!

FUEGAN

Fuegan is probably my favorite HQ choice in this book. He is a wee bit too pricey for what he does, I would have liked to see him clock in at 180-200, but he is still an ultimate beast. He has 2+ armor, eternal warrior, and feel no pain (which he will always get to use because of his eternal warrior), so he is the perfect character to champ a unit, stand in front, and shrug off bolter fire while passing away AP2 shots with look-out-sirs. Plus, that way you can manipulate the wounds he takes, and at the end of any phase in which he’s been hurt, he permanently gains +1 attack and +1 strength per wound suffered. And on top of all that, he has a fast shot firepike and split fire! With fleet + battle focus, that is a pretty large threat bubble, and you can comfortably put him with guardians or something and not waste his firepike shooting at infantry.

But here is the rules synergy that made me love Fuegan. I’m not sure how often I’d be able to pull it off, or how effective it actually would be, but on paper, it sounds awesome. What you do is you take Fuegan and a bunch of warlocks, maybe a spiritseer too. You’re trying to roll on the runes of battle as many times as you can because you want to roll one or more 1s on the table. This gets you destructor/renewer. Destructor is our familiar heavy flamer, but renewal is the important part. 18” range blessing that targets a friendly model and restores one wound.....

SO!!! You have Fuegan leading the charge in front of twenty guardians. Your opponent shoots a bunch of random stuff at your blob and Fuegan takes two wounds. At the end of the phase, he gets bumped up to 6 strength and 6 attacks. Then, on your turn, you cast renewer on him once or twice, rinse, and repeat. On paper, it works. Your opponent could either ignore the deathstar, which is probably a bad idea with battle focus and that improved threat bubble. Or, he could try to focus as much fire as he can and take out Fuegan. But if he does that, he runs the heavy risk of Fuegan surviving while having lost wounds, and runs the risk of eventually being charged with a beast-mode Fuegan with like strength 7 and 8 attacks! I really like the synergy of Fuegan + renewer and really want to try it out.

SPIRITSEER

For the price of 2 warlocks, you still get 2 rolls on the runes of battle, but this time you have a character who can join any units instead of just guardian squads. PLUS he lets you take wraithguard as troops. Even if you’re just running one unit of 5 wraithguard, this guy is a very solid, cheap HQ choice.

WRAITHGUARD WITH D-SCYTHES

In the past few years I have become very terrified of template weapons. This is likely because my last three armies have been eldar, orks, and dark eldar, and now I’m back to eldar again. With weak armor saves and a lot of units that rely on cover, these armies just get incinerated by template weapons. Hellhounds, helldrakes, vulkan he-stan, hell even chimeras with heavy flamers on the front just give me the chills.

So, here we have a unit where every model has a S4 AP2 template.... TERRIFYING! If I saw this in my opponent’s list it would most likely become the #1 target priority. You cannot charge them (because you’ll take 5d3 hits) and you cannot let them get in decent flaming range (because nothing is safe except for high toughness mobs and maybe TH/SS terminators). Such a menacing “deal with me” unit, and since Wave Serpents are also great at soaking up fire, these guys are a rocking choice and its probably worth the ~350 points to get 5 in a wave serpent.

WAVE SERPENT

That being said, I should mention wave serpents, because they’re an awesome transport. You can flat out and have a 3+ cover save with holofields, and then, any penatrating hit is reduced to a glance on a 2+! It will take a lot of firepower to bring that down, so that means you have the ability to just flat out these guys right in front of your opponent and make them deal with it. Their major weakness is stuff that ignores cover like marker lights... watch out for these as they can ruin your wave serpents days very quickly.

GUARDIANS

145 points for an 11-strong, battle focused troop choice with shrouding, rending (pretty much), and a move-and-shoot heavy weapon? Count me in! Their major weakness is that they have LD8 and the warlock doesn’t improve on that. For that reason, I think running squads of 20 is out of the question, since they will lose 5 guys and then run away in a decent of games. Only run 20 if you have a fearless phoenix lord champing the blob, or an Avatar hanging somewhere.

JETBIKES

Jetbikes dropped 5 points and got a power boost, so they are an awesome choice. Only problem is I can’t stand the old eldar jetbike model! Here’s hoping a new one comes out eventually, and if one doesn’t, I’ll have to convert some from reavers.

HEMLOCK WRAITHFIGHTER

I think this guy is CRAZY. Not for what he does, but for what kind of list he allows you to make. Just look at all the pinning weapons available in the eldar codex. If you spam pinning and take one or two wraithfighters, you can make units take multiple re-rolled pinning checks each turn, and in many instances, a pinned unit is as good as a dead unit. One theoretical problem is fearless, but the wraithfighter’s terrify takes that away! Plus, what if you get lucky and roll the -3 leadership curse on the warlock table? Thats just nasty. Or you could ally dark eldar and get raiders with torment grenade launchers to give stuff -1 leadership! This is one of my list ideas.

WARP SPIDERS

They were good in 6th before the new codex, and they only got cheaper and better. Everyone knows why and how their good, so I won’t even mention. But a lot of people don’t like the exarch now, but I love him with a spinneret rifle and fast shot. Three S6 AP1 pinning shots?? Bonkers.

FIRE PRISM

Not too expensive, and above average at anti infantry and anti tank. Great swiss army knife which is something the Eldar don’t have much of. Very solid heavy support choice.

DARK REAPERS

I’m a big fan of their new ability to move and shoot, and I think with 48” range they have a solid place in a reserves list, not outflanking or deep striking or anything, but just marching on the table edge and volleying across the table while taking minimal fire back.


So there are some of my favorite units! Thats enough plogging for today. Thanks for stopping by!

Hey! Two wraithguard done!


Easy pose to achieve, just had to chop off a bit of the shoulder of the gun arm to change its angle, and then swap a fist onto the left arm. I didn't paint all the gems green on this one, and left some of them beige and shaded them. Not sure if I'm sold on this rather than painting all the gems, but it certainly is easier and quicker, and I'm liking the look.


Here's the first one I did in a similar photo. I like the rune on the loin cloth, but its a little too big. I might look into getting pastel/acrylic pencils and drawing some skinny runes on these guys.

Lemme know what you like and what you don't like!

Coming along nicely. Keep up the great work!

Thanks for the comment @yellowbeard!!!

WRAITHGUARD PROGRESS

Done with three wraithguard!


Very happy with how they’ve turned out. Three is that magic number that, once you’ve painted three guys, you can tell if the squad will look good together. I just randomly painted one of their loin cloths like that late one night, and I liked it, so I gave each one their own tattoo. That, as well as that I painted different gems on each one, gives each wraithguard its own personality.

The bases aren’t turning out as well as I’d like. I’m going for a moonscape terrain theme because for some reason my paint scheme feels very spacy and lunar. Right now I’m just painting the bases dark grey, then using GW’s texture grey, then highlighting and washing. Any suggestions?

WEAPON PLATFORM

Done with the weapon platform!


I had actually painted the gunner earlier, but he looked weird pictured without his gun!

The two green bands on all the guardians was a product of me just messing around, but I think it looks really cool. And later, I can use it to delineate squads, maybe the next squad I paint will have 1 or 3 stripes.

NEXT!

Next task is definitely to paint the last two wraithguard. I also think I can salvage a couple of my test guardians and match them with the current scheme. No one will ever notice if a couple look a little messy.... That being said, I will have to buy one of those small boxes of 4 guardians to flesh out the squad, because some of my test guardians are beyond saving...

FIRE PRISM / NIGHT SPINNER?

I purchased a fire prism because I love the model and the new rules. I haven’t built it yet, and last night I was looking over the night spinner, and realized how great it is. I mean, a large S6-7 barrage blast that will cause one or two AP1 hits and has pinning, thats pretty good. I’m pretty sure you can force your opponent to take the AP1 hits first, and since you have to remove casualties closest to the center, you can snipe out enemy characters or heavy weapons. Plus you have a torrent flamer as well, and those are just terrifying! Anything that ignores cover is golden in 6th edition. Imagine that with a cristal targeting matrix, you hid behind a building all game and shoot barrage, but you have a ~51 inch threat radius (move 12 + flat 18 + torrent 12 + flamer 9) for whenever you see the opportunity to go and mess up some hellions’ day, or right after a huge squad of boyz charge a tank and haven’t consolidated... Can’t do that with a fire prism.

The fire prism model is cooler, but the night spinner rules are much more unique. Any opinions are appreciated

Thanks for stopping by!

oh hey haha, we have quite the similar paint scheme. I like your progress.

@cormadepanda: Haha yeah they are similar. The bone and black just look so good together, and so eldary, we have the ulthwe to thank for that. I like the orange on your wraithknight. Really want to get one of those models soon! I was thinking of working orange into my scheme but went with green instead. Maybe for fire dragons or something I could get a little orange in there. Good luck to you!

 Oneironaut wrote:
@cormadepanda: Haha yeah they are similar. The bone and black just look so good together, and so eldary, we have the ulthwe to thank for that. I like the orange on your wraithknight. Really want to get one of those models soon! I was thinking of working orange into my scheme but went with green instead. Maybe for fire dragons or something I could get a little orange in there. Good luck to you!

Orange is always nice to work with and the sort.

Yeah a reversed Ulthwe is good! The model is epic, but so freaking huge...

WRAITHGUARD DONE


First full squad done! Well, 99%, still have a few touches I could do


I got the designs on the cloths from an eldar water transfer sheet. The guy in the front's helmet is a little mucky cause he was my first and I tried painting tattoos on his face plate.


Probably took 10-15 man hours to paint all five. Mainly just shading the bone, highlighting the black, and doing the gems and the tabbard. I ordered a bleached bone duplicate army painter spray and eagerly await it cutting my painting time by at least 20%


My favorite one

I still have a few touch ups to do and have to finish the bases of a couple, but I wanted to get some photos up on my plog before I leave on a lil' vacation.

I used moot green, which is a very cool color, on the cloths but I think it might be a bit too bright, I might try goblin I mean warboss green instead.

ON THE HORIZON

That vacation I mentioned is back home where my old eldar sit in a box on a shelf. I intend to salvage and take back 2 wave serpents, a falcon, 10 reapers, 5 fire dragons, 10+ dire avengers, some guardians, some characters, an avatar, and anything else I'm forgetting. These--along with the 10 warp spiders and 10 scorpions I have with me--will somehow be cleaned, stripped, and added to my new army!

I ordered the bone spray paint as I mentioned, and also got some magnets and green stuff. I've never used magnets in miniatures, and I've used green stuff sparsely, so I've got some experimenting to do and any advice would be great!

I still have that new fire prism but want to wait for my magnets to assemble it so I can swap it between fire prism and night spinner.

I hope these photos are better than the ones I've been taking. I am trying to improve the quality of my miniature's photographs and would love some advice!

Lemme know whatcha think! Thanks for stopping by!

MY OLD ELDAR

I went home to Washington DC for my father’s birthday this weekend, and brought back to Texas a bag full of my old Eldar miniatures! Taking them on an airplane was not ideal, but was better than shipping them. For some reason, the TSA wasn’t concerned about the bag full of spiky metal things, and instead decided they had to throw away my toothpaste...

Anyways, here they are!



I had a lot of fun digging through my shelf of old warhammer stuff. I also took my Dark Eldar bitz box, which I couldn’t find when I left at first. The tackle box is loaded with all the juicy extra bits that came with the ~3000pts of Dark Eldar I’ve accumulated, and I figured it will come in handy when doing Eldar conversions. I also brought the talos spues that I had. I bought that talos with the intention to use its awesome bitz for conversions instead of actually building a talos. That being said, I have a strong urge to convert some kind of wraithlord-talos thing for my Dark Eldar army.



I was very proud of this Eldar army when I was painting it as it represented my best artistic work to date. But, as you can see, my painting skills have grown, and I’ve decided to do a different paint scheme, so I plan on stripping the paint from my old eldar so I can absorb them into a new army. So, I’ve decided to post some pics of them, so after they’re grey and silver again, their old personalities will live on in the internets forever!











My wave serpents were definitely my favorite, as for some reason I decided to draw random, elaborate freehand on them. This one has a dragon! Eldar tanks are perfect canvases for freehand because they have a lot of flat(ish) empty spaces. I plan on doing some new stuff on my new paint jobs.

Here is a side by side comparison with my most recent Eldar so you can see how my painting talents have improved.



Also, they’re not painted, but I’ve got some warp spiders and striking scorpions too!





THE CORESPUR ELITE: MY DARK EDLAR ARMY

Since I mentioned them above, I’ve decided to say a quick word about my Dark Eldar army, The Corespur Elite. This army is the most extensive 40k project I’ve ever done. Actually, its probably the most extensive project I’ve ever done in anything ever! I probably put close to 500 hours into assembling, converting, and painting them. And thats not including the hours I’ve spent playing with them and developing my tabletop skills. Besides for maybe my college degree, I don’t think I’ve ever put so much time and effort into any one thing. And I couldn’t be prouder!

I’m posting this here because I plan on integrating my Dark Eldar army with my Eldar on the tabletop because they are indeed “battle brothers”. I briefly considered using the same paint scheme on my Eldar and making the Corespur Elite a joint army, but I was soooooo bored of painting all that purple and doing all those pink edge highlights! I wanted to do something new, and decided my Eldar would be their own entity, even if they do end up fighting together most of the time.

Anyways, here are a few pics to show off, but feel free to check out my Corespur Elite blog to see how this army grew and developed!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/402942.page

















WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE OTHER ULTHWE?

I just got my order from the warstore which includes bleached bone spray paint (hooray!), some green stuff, and most interestingly, some rare earth magnets! Next I will assemble this fireprism / night spinner and try out magnetizing miniatures for the first time!



Come back to see how it goes!

As always, thanks for stopping by!