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Before I start, I would love to hear your guys' feedback and questions. I thought I'd start this blog to showcase my Eldar army and use it to inspire me to actually work on them. I think we all know the strains of just sitting down and working on your miniatures. Also, I would like to update this every 3 days or so, depending on how much progress I make. So, what have I been working on recently? Well, I just snagged an eldar start collecting box, a box of wraithguard, and an additional wraithlord. I love these wraith models soooo much. I've always wanted to have some but I never got around to it. Notice that I don't yet have a wraithknight... Hint. Hint.



So, what have I done so far? You may have noticed some of the wraithguard are partially painted. I just went over them with a couple colors with my airbrush, nothing crazy.... yet. One thing you may not have been able to notice is the tiny little bits of metal all over those wraithguard. Yup, I'm talking about magnets. I decided I want to make my wraith units as posable as possible. I have used some pinning and magnetization methods. I don't know if anyone else has done this before but I think it was pretty creative. As you'll see in the pictures below, the wraith units can rotate at the waist, head, arms, and wrists.

These are the magnets I will be using to magnetize the wraithguard and the wraithlords I have: There are 100 1mmx1mm, 200 2mmx1mm and about 50 1/8inx1/32in. I don't think I'll be using all of these but they all cost me about $18.


This was the first method of pinning that I used on my wraith units:



I drilled a small hole into the legs so that I could glue a curved paper clip into it. Then, I drolled two holes into the torso. One in the neck and one in the bottom that you can't see super well. Basically, I would slide the torso over the curved piece of metal and then attach the head to the end with a little bit of blue tack. This allowed for the torso and the head to rotate. There was a bit of a downside with this method. Not only was this a difficult method due to each paperclip having to be bent at a different angle. Instead, I decided to involve some magnets in the process.

This is the second method of pinning that includes magnets:



This was a very similar method to the first. The paperclip is glued into the leg joint with a bit of blue tack to help hold the torso in place. Then, I shaved off a bit of the neck ball joint so I could drill a hole and glue a magnet into the neck. Then I drilled a hole into the head to put an opposing magnet. DO KEEP IN MIND. If you are working with magnets, watch your polarity. I have yet to make a mistake (knock on wood) but it is bound to happen.

One of the fun things with magnets is that you can pose your miniatures in some really fun ways. I have finished most of the arms for the first squad. As you'll notice, the wraithblades with the swords still have shields. I haven't yet magnetized their left arms. Also, there are some really funny ways to mess with the models! You'll also see a picture with all of the arms I have drilled holes into and magnetized. Each wrist with a sword or axe is also magnetized.

Colour me interested! Big fan of Eldar and I'm keen on seeing what you do with your budding Wraithhost!

I don't know if I would have gone to the same lengths as to magnetise the heads, I would have just done the arms so I can make wraithguard or wraithblades.

That is impressive work. I'm interested to where you take that color scheme! Right now, it reminds me of cotton candy. Which i am for, by the way.

Good job. I magnetized my wraith unit to have all the weapons. A lot of work for sure so I respect the dedication. I didn't think of magnetising the heads though in hindsight..

What did you use the 1x1 magents on btw ?
I found them too weak to work on anything in a meaningful way. Maybe I missed something.

Ended up using 2x2 3x1 and 3x0.5

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Colour me interested! Big fan of Eldar and I'm keen on seeing what you do with your budding Wraithhost!

I don't know if I would have gone to the same lengths as to magnetise the heads, I would have just done the arms so I can make wraithguard or wraithblades.

Yeah, I wanted to go all out on the magnets. It's been a lot of work but I just listen to battle reports or podcasts while I drill holes and fill them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 amazingturtles wrote:
That is impressive work. I'm interested to where you take that color scheme! Right now, it reminds me of cotton candy. Which i am for, by the way.

Yeah, I am not sure how I want to paint them tbh. I have some ideas but nothing concrete. I love the look of the iybraesil craftworld. That's what I kind of want to go for but I don't know how I want to do that. I also want to incorporate some purple into the army, as you can see with the shoulder pads and other purple blends. I've been using an airbrush to base coat and add some additional highlights and shadows before putting on a wash but I really don't know what I'm doing. xD


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 Argive wrote:
Good job. I magnetized my wraith unit to have all the weapons. A lot of work for sure so I respect the dedication. I didn't think of magnetising the heads though in hindsight..

What did you use the 1x1 magents on btw ?
I found them too weak to work on anything in a meaningful way. Maybe I missed something.

Ended up using 2x2 3x1 and 3x0.5

Currently, I am using the 1x1 magnets for the ranged options wrists. It's the spot where the wrist connects to the hand attached to the barrel. I purchased them thinking they would work better than they do but I was a little dissapointed. I'll probably be ordering more 2x1's soon. That's currently my favorite size to work with.

Yeah I found that too. The 1x1 just don't seem do do anything bit of a waste of money but hey-ho live and learn.

The 2x2 and 3x0.5 are my Fav. With a bit of green-stuffing around the wrists it looks passable for decent. I put a 3x1 into the shoulders for extra umph.

A hack I found is that the next unit of guard I will do is the gun variant only so. Will just be magnetising the barrel and keeping the gun of either D-scythe or Wraith cannon so only one set of magnets per model.

The third unit will be blades only so again less magnetising. My theory is that it gives me the ability to field 10x of whatever variant or 3 unit combination of whatever.

 Argive wrote:
Yeah I found that too. The 1x1 just don't seem do do anything bit of a waste of money but hey-ho live and learn.

The 2x2 and 3x0.5 are my Fav. With a bit of green-stuffing around the wrists it looks passable for decent. I put a 3x1 into the shoulders for extra umph.

A hack I found is that the next unit of guard I will do is the gun variant only so. Will just be magnetising the barrel and keeping the gun of either D-scythe or Wraith cannon so only one set of magnets per model.

The third unit will be blades only so again less magnetising. My theory is that it gives me the ability to field 10x of whatever variant or 3 unit combination of whatever.

That's smart. I still have the second squad of wraithblades to magnetize. When it comes to the ranged weapons, I only magnetized the Dscythe because I like the look of it better. In general, I'll probably just use wraithcannon rules but very few people will notice or care. When it comes to the wraithblade part, an axe and a sword are so different that I thought I should just magnetize both. Also, I haven't decided which option I like better when it comes to the rules. I have found the swords to be great for most of my enemies with all the extra attacks but the axes are nice when I face against my friend who plays a heavy crisis suit list of tau.

Sorry for such a late update, my computer has been really weird and didn't like me uploading images to the gallery. As before, I love feedback. If you've tried a similar effect on anything before, I would love some tips. So, I have made some significant progress. I drilled out all the holes and started putting magnets into the next 5 man squad of wraithguard, that was lengthy. Also, I started work on some of my other eldar units that have been in storage for about a year and a half. I purchased an eldar battlebox, the one with the wave serpent, vyper, guardians, and dire avengers. I assembled them years ago and painted them. They didn't look too great. So, I decided to prime over my old paint scheme about 18 months ago. This lead to what I call the 'bad batch' fiasco. It nearly ruined my eldar miniatures. I primed them with a rustoleom primer and it was part of bad batch... The paint dried with cracks and bubbles everywhere. I was utterly horrified. I attempted to wash off the gunk with all sorts of chemicals. Some of them helped but most did nothing. Some even reacted with the paint and made the plastic pliable and tacky. That was nearly the end of my eldar journey. Down below, you'll see some pictures of my eldar wave serpent and vyper that I repainted over the past week.

With both of these models, I used my airbrush to prime them with vallejo grey. Then I used a black to hit the shadows. After that, I went in with sotek green to base coat. I made sure not to completely cover up the shadows. Then I worked my way up including more and more white to add highlights. After getting to this point, I decided I wanted to add a little bit of a galaxy look to each vehicle. I took some painters tape and hand cut out all the little hexigons to get a nice pattern. Then I applied a black base coat to the galaxy area. Next, I threw some random spirals down to make a little bit of a nebula look. Then I used a small paper cup to make the outline of the planet on the wave serpent. Finally, I dipped my brush in some white paint and flicked it at the black areas to add stars.

Wave serpent:



Vyper:

Very cool.Wwhat did you use for a stencil on the viper? Was it flexibale / mylar sheet ?

I tried using a mdf one but it failed miserably. I need to get another sized stencil from anarchy models as the micro sized one I have is very good but too small for vehicles.

Btw you could always srtip the paint job and start from scratch.

Also I think your scheme would work really well with colour shift chameleon paints from greesntuff world. Check out my WIP pics for the effect.

Too bad about the speckling on the viper. You could mask the pattern and go at it with an airbrush again maybe? Also liquid mask is another useful tool where masking tape is too unwieldy.

 Argive wrote:
Very cool.Wwhat did you use for a stencil on the viper? Was it flexibale / mylar sheet ?

I tried using a mdf one but it failed miserably. I need to get another sized stencil from anarchy models as the micro sized one I have is very good but too small for vehicles.

I took some painters tape and hand cut out all the little hexigons to get a nice pattern.

Apparently it was tape! I know, I'm shocked too!

Impressive repaints Optimal And commiserations on the bad prime, Rustoleum did me wrong the one time I used it as well, mangled ~40 chaos warriors to the point I sold them to my brother in disgust (which he painted up quite nicely like last week, almost 10 years later!)