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Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

Thanks all, glad you like them! I've found that getting them all out like this really does motivate me to keep going and paint some more, see just how big I can grow this collection. There's plenty on sprue still to work on, and now that I've finished all my 'big' stuff (Scorpion and Wraithknights) I'm getting a bit of an itch to add something else from Forgeworld.

The army is on permanent display across a couple of cabinets in my mancave. It used to occupy a single Detolf, but it's long since overflowed into another cabinet. I definitely agree about keeping stuff on display if you can; after putting so much time and effort into the painting it's a shame to shut it away in storage boxes.

   
Made in gb
Walking Dead Wraithlord






I'm taking somewhat of a separate approach. I've been doing all the small stuff first and keeping the big pieces for last.

I agree about the display.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/772746.page#10378083 - My progress/failblog painting blog thingy

Eldar- 4436 pts


AngryAngel80 wrote:
I don't know, when I see awesome rules, I'm like " Baby, your rules looking so fine. Maybe I gotta add you to my first strike battalion eh ? "


 Eonfuzz wrote:


I would much rather everyone have a half ass than no ass.


"A warrior does not seek fame and honour. They come to him as he humbly follows his path"  
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

This may just be the longest period between updates of this thread. I've largely been working on a Warlord Titan in the meantime which I think is a fair excuse, but noticing the gap between updates definitely makes me want to focus a bit more on the eldar.

Anyway, an update! I've painted up another pair of grav tanks. Up until recently the army had one Fire Prism and no Night Spinners - a travesty! I was particularly disappointed I hadn't got around to doing a Night Spinner yet. I'm not quite sure if they're a signature Biel-Tan unit or not; I know that they're supposed to be the main (only?) user of the super-heavy Void Spinner variant, so it makes sense to me that they should be rather fond of Night Spinners too. This one was actually built with the spare parts left over from my Warp Hunter, since they give you a full Fire Prism/Night Spinner sprue, and all you're missing are the crystal parts and the canopies. So, given I had a surplus of Falcons, a bit of careful shaving of a canopy so that it fit the Night Spinner turret, and it worked pretty well. I made the actual Fire Prism/Night Spinner kit into a second Fire Prism since they're a pretty iconic Eldar unit and so I felt I needed more than one.

I think I've achieved a level of gradients/contrast on these that I'm a lot happier with than the recent ones I'd painted. My earliest grav tanks were entirely hand painted, building up the highlights through about four layers to get the effect I wanted. Since I picked up an airbrush that became a lot easier, but I felt like I lacked a bit of the depth of gradient I'd achieved with the brush method. This time around I made one simple change of putting down my basecoat of Luftwaffe Camo Green over a black undercoat, so that it came out a bit darker than previously when I'd been putting it directly onto grey primer. I'll put that down to the thin nature of airbrushed layers.

With the addition of these, it takes my grav tank collection to 10 falcon hulls (3 falcons, 3 wave serpents, 2 prisms, 1 spinner and 1 warp hunter), plus the scorpion of course. Next up (and already started) is another squad of Dire Avengers.






   
Made in us
Nimble Ellyrian Reaver






Those are some fancy grav tanks. The airbrushed green looks wonderful. The orange on the... spinner chambers? is classic and looks great, as does the blue on the prisms.

   
Made in gb
Ancient Venerable Dreadnought






I’m impressed that you found time for these whilst doing the warlord. They both look great!

Goberts Gubbins - P&M Blog, started with Oldhammer, often Blackstone Fortress and Void Panther Marines, with side projects along the way 
   
Made in gb
Walking Dead Wraithlord






Top notch work as usual!
Really like the blend on the spinner barrel

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/08/08 21:58:22


https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/772746.page#10378083 - My progress/failblog painting blog thingy

Eldar- 4436 pts


AngryAngel80 wrote:
I don't know, when I see awesome rules, I'm like " Baby, your rules looking so fine. Maybe I gotta add you to my first strike battalion eh ? "


 Eonfuzz wrote:


I would much rather everyone have a half ass than no ass.


"A warrior does not seek fame and honour. They come to him as he humbly follows his path"  
   
Made in au
Regular Dakkanaut





Australia

Far out this is a really impressive collection you've built Bellerophon! Beautifully painted. I don't know how I haven't come across your P&M blog before but I've really enjoyed reading though it from the start. I've always had a soft spot for Biel-Tan and the old models and paint schemes from 3rd edition and your army really does them justice. I've been thinking of starting my own small force so your blog has come at the perfect time! I look forward to following along

 
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

Cheers guys. The spinner barrels were a few different stages of airbrushed gradients, then painting in the black frame afterwards. I'm pleased with how they came out.

 zahnib wrote:
Far out this is a really impressive collection you've built Bellerophon! Beautifully painted. I don't know how I haven't come across your P&M blog before but I've really enjoyed reading though it from the start. I've always had a soft spot for Biel-Tan and the old models and paint schemes from 3rd edition and your army really does them justice. I've been thinking of starting my own small force so your blog has come at the perfect time! I look forward to following along

Thanks, I'm glad you've been enjoying the blog. It's been quite a journey from that day a few years back when I placed my first bid on an ebay auction of metal aspect warriors! Like I've said a couple of times in the last few pages, progress will probably be slower from here on, just because I've got so much eldar painted already and I've got a few other projects on the go, but I think I'll always keep coming back to them and adding new units.

   
Made in au
Regular Dakkanaut





Australia

You've documented your journey really nicely Not to worry, whatever and whenever updates come along I look forward to seeing them.

 
   
Made in ca
Fixture of Dakka





Surrey, BC - Canada

Always great to see your Eldar Bellerophon.

Cheers,

CB

   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

After saying updates would be sparse, I've been working on Eldar... which I rate as a good thing!

Another squad of Dire Avengers finished, this time 10 of them with a glaive/shield Exarch. Most of my existing DAs are fairly dark, so I decided to go lighter with these. I painted the blue, and painted the helmets all over with the pale grey blue, and was planning on painting the faceplate and plume a different colour. Probably a black faceplate and multicoloured plumes like you tend to see on the studio scheme. But then I decided I liked how it looked with just the pale grey blue basecoat across the whole headpiece, added some shading and kept them as they are. So the helmet itself got a slightly blue tinted shade, and the plume a slight purple tint. I'm pleased with how it looks. Now that these are done, that's actually all of the Dire Avengers that I currently own, that's this squad of 10 with glaive/shield, one squad of 10 with diresword, and three squads of 5 with twin shuricat exarchs. The Eldar to-do pile has been so big that it feels slightly weird to finish my backlog of a single unit type, let alone the whole collection.

This is also the first time I've taken the gallery auto adjust rather than the original image, I think for these photos it better represents the reality.



I've also painted Amallyn Shadowguide, who I picked up from ebay a little while ago. I'd always planned to get her, since she's canonically Biel-Tan so how could I not, but it was only recently when I started to consider that Blackstone Fortress might not be around much longer that I actually got around to it.



I'm still working on more Eldar at the minute, so there should be another update before too much longer - which will be the long-planned Phase 4 of the Ridiculous Seer Council.

   
Made in us
Walking Dead Wraithlord






Avengers, assemble. Congrats on finishing them up. Sweet work on Amallyn, as well.
   
Made in fi
Longtime Dakkanaut






Nice and classic schemes, especially on the tanks. Vibrant colours suit them well.

#ConvertEverything blog with loyalist Death Guard in true and Epic scales. Also Titans and killer robots! C&C welcome.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/717557.page

Do you like narrative gaming? Ongoing Imp vs. PDF rebellion campaign reports here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/786958.page

 
   
Made in gb
Ancient Venerable Dreadnought






Cool Avengers, I can see why you stuck to the grey helms for them. Amalynn is a cool mini, you’ve done her well

Goberts Gubbins - P&M Blog, started with Oldhammer, often Blackstone Fortress and Void Panther Marines, with side projects along the way 
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

Thanks guys. Next update - time to expand the seer council! The first three phases consisted of every generic foot seer that ever saw wide release, so the obvious place to go from here was into the skyrunners, Eldrad(s) and kitbashes. So here we have Phase 4. Consisting of:

Farseer Skyrunner
Warlock Skyrunner
Original Metal Eldrad
Original Metal Eldrad, converted to resemble the Biel-Tan farseer from the old studio army – moved the sword to the right hand, pointed downward, added a shuriken pistol to the left hand, greenstuffed sleeves, and chopped the crest off the helmet and added a hair/topknot/thing, and painted in the same colours – hence this being my only farseer that doesn’t have a mainly white helm.
Modern plastic farseer, kitbashed with harlequin pistol, a skyrunner witchblade and skyrunner helmet
Spiritseer, kitbashed with spiritseer bits on a farseer body
Warlock, kitbashed with warlock/farseer parts on a spiritseer body



I’m pleased with how they came out overall. The greenstuff work on the converted Eldrad is a bit shoddy, but I think the paintjob hides it somewhat, so I’m content. Also the original studio one has some runes painted down the white inside/’lapels’ of the cloak, which I haven’t done here – mainly because the photos weren’t clear enough on which runes they were, and I think it looks cool enough this way anyway.

And now, the full seer council (so far). I can definitely see another expansion – I’ve still got a couple of farseers on sprue, and none of the new plastic Eldrad. I could see doing some kitbashes with him, and could certainly add more skyrunners… Will the Ridiculous Seer Council project ever end? I honestly don’t know.



So what’s this about two boxes? Well, box number one was a fairly small one. I (perhaps unwisely) signed up for Warhammer+, received my voucher and saw that I had to use it this month. I had a bit of a balance sitting around anyway from when they did that “buy vouchers and we’ll give you 10% extra” scheme at the start of Covid lockdowns, so I figured I’d pick up one of the few Codex entries that I’ve been missing until now – a trio of Support Weapon platforms. Not particularly exciting, but I’m pleased to finally fill in that gap in the collection. I've already started building, and I expect they'll be one of the next things I post up here.

Box number two though, that’s a bit more interesting. So naturally, despite ordering on the same day, box number one had arrived before box two even dispatched from the warehouse. I sat around rather impatiently, and it arrived today:




Two titans! I’d been watching things go in and out of stock on Forgeworld, trying to decide on the next big project after my Warlord. I’d still like more Imperial titans, but a combination of wanting something bigger for my Biel-Tan, and some practical concerns pushed me towards the Phantom. The practical concerns being mainly that I knew I wanted to get one at some point, and that I was going to have to get myself a big new display cabinet to house my Warlord and prospective future titans. And the phantom – being tall and lanky and likely to be more dynamically posed than an imperial titan – might just dictate the dimensions that the display cabinet needs to be. So I figured I should have a Phantom built before settling on a cabinet, so the sooner the Phantom gets built, the sooner it (and my Warlord) get a place to live.

The weapons have also been in and out of stock. My initial thought was that I’d go with one pulsar and one distortion cannon. I’m not a big fan of the power glaive really, although I’m sure it makes a great canvas for a power sword type paintjob. However the pulsar has been pretty consistently out of stock, and I decided that between the two guns, if I was going to double up on anything it should be the distortion cannon. Because when it comes down to it, the pulsar is a giant laser, whereas the distortion cannon rips holes in the fabric of reality, which in my book makes it one of the coolest and most ridiculous (in a good way) weapon technologies in the setting. So double distortion cannons it is. (I'll stop before I talk myself into a Cobra too).

Meanwhile, the Revenant – I figured I’d eventually get a pair of Revenants (ideally one of each weapon loadout, if the sonic lance one ever comes back), and since the pulsar one was in stock I thought I may as well get it delivered alongside the Phantom and make it an even more excessive delivery of resin. Though I must say the Revenant came in a suprisingly small box, when compared against the red titan box for the Phantom.I also had a mild concern that a number of Eldar forgeworld options (like the Wasp and Phoenix Bomber) have disappeared recently and while I don't think they'd do away with the titans I'd hate for them to disappear without having some in my collection.

I'm not sure where I'll start work. Possibly the Revenant, but I might find the Phantom too tempting to resist for long.

For a final photo (for now) - a Phantom distortion cannon against a Warlord Belicosa Volcano Cannon:



   
Made in us
Walking Dead Wraithlord






An impressive display of psychic might. The Eldrad conversion is awesome. Really hearkens back to the model that inspired it. And titans on the way. Very exciting!
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

 youwashock wrote:
An impressive display of psychic might. The Eldrad conversion is awesome. Really hearkens back to the model that inspired it. And titans on the way. Very exciting!


Thanks - I'm glad you like the Eldrad conversion, I'd had it in mind for a while, and I'm generally pleased with how it came out. As i said in the last post though, I'm just a bit dissappointed with the quality of my greenstuffing - although I've been pretty regularly using greenstuff and milliput it's been a long time since I've actively sculpted anything on a model - it's been gap filling, making rock formations on bases and packing in magnets. I should maybe have had a bit of a practice, but never mind, it's certainly passable.

Today I've been washing and doing a first pass at trimming the Revenant. Going ffrom one titan extreme to the other - my Warlord was a massive hobby project, and it somewhat set my expectations for working on titans. But by comparison this is a tiny quantity of resin and I could see myself getting it done surprisingly quickly. I have no doubt though that the Phantom will be a much bigger project.


   
Made in gb
Ancient Venerable Dreadnought






The seer council looks great, the conversions look cool and the whole bunch are epic. It’s the Titans I’m really looking forward to seeing develop, rapid work sorting out the Revenant too, you’ll have it done in not time

Goberts Gubbins - P&M Blog, started with Oldhammer, often Blackstone Fortress and Void Panther Marines, with side projects along the way 
   
Made in ca
Fixture of Dakka





Surrey, BC - Canada

Quite the Seer Council Bellerophon, very nice as always.

Cheers,

CB

   
Made in fi
Foolproof Falcon Pilot





Finland, Espoo

Been a while.

Absolutely stunning work on the grav tanks as always! They look so tasty.
Loving the Amallyn and the Seer Council as well.

I'm eager to see the titans progress. Bet they will be beyond awesome!

   
Made in us
Grisly Ghost Ark Driver






The spare head would be a very cool bit of base material for a special character to be standing on. I'm excited to see you build these guys!

See what's on my painting table Now painting: Kruleboyz Gutrippaz 
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

Thanks guys - I'm looking forward to seeing these finished as much as you are!

I've been washing/scrubbing the phantom pieces, and had the first pass at trimming the casting gates off and then experimenting with how the various bits fit together. What better indicator of scale than a background Warlord?



I'm now at the point where I need to pick a pose and start gluing. I find I'm not one to rush into decisions in general, and it can often result in hobby procrastination. Until I commit to building a particular pose, or gluing a particular option on, or picking a paint scheme, there's vast potential there. But the moment you commit, all those other options are killed off, and you lock yourself into a pose, a variant, a paint job. I almost need to push myself over that hurdle sometimes - yes, committing to a particular pose does kill off all those other possibilities, but a completed model is vastly better than one that's languishing unfinished. It's been particularly bad with my primaris that came from Dark Imperium, Wake the Dead and Indomitus; I've built a bunch of them but not a one has seen a paintbrush because I still haven't made my mind up on a chapter.

These will certainly have to have fairly dynamic poses. I've seen a number of Eldar titans posted online where they've been built just stood up straight with their feet side by side, and it just doesn't work for me. These are Eldar titans, they shouldn't look stiff and static.I think I'll try to build the Revenant in a running pose. The wraithknight with sword that I posted a couple of pages back was meant to be running, but I couldn't manage to make it work, there wasn't enough articulation in the joints for the pose I wanted. So instead it ended up in that sort of leap, which as it turned out was pretty cool too. But the titans have quite a bit more range in the joints and I think (from playing around with the pieces and seeing a few photos) can pull off the running pose well. So I think I'll do that for the Revenant, but just due to the sheer size of the Phantom I think I'll build it with both feet firmly planted. If it only had one foot on the ground there's potentially a lot of lever action there. Both will get bases of course - I've got a whole bunch of MDF circles and ovals in various sizes that I laser cut in anticipation a few years ago while I had access to a laser cutter. I'm sure there'll be some suitable ones to pick from. With suitable pinning to the base they should be suitably stable.

So, a running Revenant, and a Phantom, probably in mid stride with the legs fairly wide (maybe a big tactical rock - or crushed tank underfoot?). I think that would work.

 Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:
The spare head would be a very cool bit of base material for a special character to be standing on. I'm excited to see you build these guys!

Just due to the size of it (it's a titan after all...) I was wondering whether it might end up being stomped on by a Cerastus knight or a warhound or something... A cool piece to have in my bits box certainly.

I think I'm probably going to build it with the guardian-style faceplate rather than the T-slit one. It just seems more craftworld to me, whereas the T-slit feels a bit more dark eldar.

   
Made in gb
Ancient Venerable Dreadnought






Oooh, that pose sounds really cool! I think you’re right about the helmet too, the guardian style looks much more Eldar

Goberts Gubbins - P&M Blog, started with Oldhammer, often Blackstone Fortress and Void Panther Marines, with side projects along the way 
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

Another long stretch without an update, but seeing all the eldar teases has me motivated to work on the backlog a bit more. I'd had another 10 Fire dragons primed and ready for paint for quite a while, and although I don't think they'll get new sculpts this time around, it just felt like a good idea to try to finish off my selection of metal aspects before (hopefully) some new plastic ones land. This takes me to a total of 30 painted fire dragons, which is absolutely excessive, but they were always my favourite aspect, and primarily I ended up with so many just based on the deals I found on ebay for the metal ones. The first two squads I painted up were squads of 10, which left me with 8 dragons and 2 Exarchs. I painted them all in the same scheme so that they can either be two squads of 5, or a single squad with up to 8 dragons+Exarch - if I need a full 10-strong squad one of my other squads will just have to do!

I've also got 20 guardians to do, and since the rumours are pointing to a new guardian kit I feel like I should do the ones I have before some fancy new ones turn up and put me off doing the old ones.

I painted these closer to the standard studio scheme, except with yellow face plates rather than black, and sticking with the dark bronze coloured fusion guns that I used on my other squads.



For fun, my 3 fire dragon shrines together:




I've also (after being distracted by other projects) started to make some progress on the revenant. Because I want to do it in a running pose, that means that it'll be held up on just one leg, and I want that leg to be as solid as I can make it. So I'm using JB-Weld to make absolutely sure it stays together. Since I first used it on the Warlord, I've become quite a fan of using epoxy on bigger forgeworld models anyway, even when I don't need the strength of bond, if only because you often have a bit of a gap between the two pieces and epoxy is good at filling in those small gaps even as it fixes the pieces together. The downside of course is having to wait for it to cure, which drags out the assembly process.

Anyway, this is the leg pose:



The exact amount of 'lean' on that will depend on how I glue the ankle. Again, because of balancing on one leg I wanted to have as much of the foot in contact with the ground as possible, so I've glued the foot pieces for the left leg such that both the toes and the heel are firmly on the ground, but what I didn't realise was that there wasn't as much play in the ankle as I first thought. With the legs glued as I have done, and the foot flat on the ground, it would be more of an upwards leap than a running forwards - which is irritating because I had a similar problem on the wraithknight I tried to do in a running pose, only in that case it was limited knee articulation that hindered me. My solution (assuming I stick with the run rather than leap) is to give the titan a nice big tactical rock to be launching off, so that both the toes and heel can be attached to the base, but I can achieve the pose I want. Such as in this crude illustration (feet currently blu-tac'd on):


   
Made in us
Walking Dead Wraithlord






An excess of Fire Dragons is never a bad thing. They look great. Also, nice to see the engineering continuing on the titan.
   
Made in ca
Fixture of Dakka





Surrey, BC - Canada

5 minute epoxy is a great gluing material Bellerophon. It is a much stringer bond than superglue. I also pin...because accidents are known to happen to models. :(

Good luck on the big project.

Cheers,

CB

   
Made in gb
Liberated Grot Land Raida






Northern Ireland

Tactical rock or tactical rhino hull... maybe. Something suitably rusted down to neutral so you’re not fielding a smurf transport every time he’s on the table. Actually maybe not. Overwrought bases can be a bit of a draw to the eye that you don’t want. Maybe a rock is best. But hey you’ve got options on a base that size.

   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

More progress on the Revenant. I've been a bit slow on this, to be honest I've not been hobbying much, I've had other things going on. But slow and steady, with the extra motivator of the new Eldar releases coming up. I 3d printed myself a tactical rock. and grabbed one of the 6mm MDF bases that I lasercut a while back. I've fixed the rock to the base with a couple of countersunk screws from underneath, and the titan's foot is JB-Welded to the rock, with four separate 2mm stainless steel pins. I don't want this coming apart! All the joints in the legs and main torso are also JB-Weld.

Today I decided on, and fitted, the arms and the gun bodies. These I've just pinned and superglued, that should be plenty strong enough since they're not load-bearing. The actual gun barrels are just dry-fitted into the gun bodies, and I might leave them like that. They hold in place absolutely fine, and it would make transport a lot easier if I left them detachable. (And yes, I do need to straighten them a bit).

This photo is the latest progress, with the head, back fin shoulder engines and pauldrons dry-fitted, to get a better idea of what it's going to look like. Most of those parts I'm going to paint separately, so they won't be glued on until it's finished. The idea is that it's aiming down the left arm gun, with the right arm gun pointing up with the 'flow' of the pose.




 Captain Brown wrote:
5 minute epoxy is a great gluing material Bellerophon. It is a much stringer bond than superglue. I also pin...because accidents are known to happen to models. :(


I should maybe get some of the 5 minute stuff. I use original JB-Weld, which I believe is one of the strongest bonds that you're likely to get - but it does require clamping for about a day for it to fully cure. It makes the assembly process take quite a while, but I don't mind so much on things like titans, I think they benefit from really taking your time. But the quicker curing epoxies would be plenty strong enough, I'm sure, and not require clamping for quite so long.

---

I've also got one copy of Eldritch Omens on the way, splitting it with somebody who fancied the chaos. I might have been tempted by more copies if it had been a little cheaper, but as it is I would only spring for more if I knew somebody else who fancied the chaos. Besides, while I want the new Rangers and Shroud Runners, they're not the main focus of my Swordwind. I would like at least a couple of the new Autarchs though!

   
Made in gb
Walking Dead Wraithlord






Looking good!

Always enjoy looking at your thread

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/772746.page#10378083 - My progress/failblog painting blog thingy

Eldar- 4436 pts


AngryAngel80 wrote:
I don't know, when I see awesome rules, I'm like " Baby, your rules looking so fine. Maybe I gotta add you to my first strike battalion eh ? "


 Eonfuzz wrote:


I would much rather everyone have a half ass than no ass.


"A warrior does not seek fame and honour. They come to him as he humbly follows his path"  
   
Made in ca
Fixture of Dakka





Surrey, BC - Canada

Bellerophon,

Big, beautiful model...storing it is the really challenge.

Good luck.

CB

   
 
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