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What could be done to make cheap Eldar Rangers?
I have a few cloaks from the old Wood Elf Glade guard set, plus plenty of Dark Eldar Splinter rifle barrels to make the sniper rifles.

Would it look ok to just get Eldar Guardians, cut off their backpack, replace it with the cloak and glue the Splinter rifle barrel to their shuriken catapult?
Would it help to paint their armour in a camo scheme?

I like the GW sculpts well enough, but I can't stand fail-cast, fine-crap, Fine Cast
I will definitely be using the Cloaks and barrels that I have already, and Guardians seem to be the cheapest base model ($10 for 4), maybe MAYBE Kabalites.
I guess I am really asking about the paint scheme then. And possibly if gluing grassy flock to the armour would look terrible or not.

-Thanx

Guardians with alternate rifles and suitable cloaks/camo would be appropriate. Just put some actual effort into the conversion and I can't see anyone really complaining.

I definitely want to add flock to the cloak, but I am debating the armour coloration. I don't want to do bright Craftworld color as that just doesn't make sense to me.

I could glue flock to the armour (just the armour, but not the material underneath) but this might not turn out they way I picture it in my head.
Or, I could do a mix of metallic greens and browns to make it look like the armour shifts color on its own.

Thoughts?

I definitely wouldn't do flock on either, personally...not a very Eldar approach. Their cloaks are fancy shape-shifting stuff, not ghillie suites like humans might wear.

I don't mind the bright colours mixed with the darker camo cloaks as it makes sense to me. If you're concerned with the bright colours, just give them a muted colour (or even a muted version of the Craftworld's own style).

 Elbows wrote:
I definitely wouldn't do flock on either, personally...not a very Eldar approach. Their cloaks are fancy shape-shifting stuff, not ghillie suites like humans might wear.

I don't mind the bright colours mixed with the darker camo cloaks as it makes sense to me. If you're concerned with the bright colours, just give them a muted colour (or even a muted version of the Craftworld's own style).

I might do this on a few select bits of armour. I use bright yellows and reds on my Eldar, which is just too bright for a model that is supposes to be blending in.
I like the idea of doing muted red on just the shoulder/knees and dull yellow on their helm though.

Ok, so no flock. I guess the cloak will be a traditional brown/green camo then.
What do you think about metallic browns (tin-bits/bronze) mixed with metallic green on the other bits of armour?
I have had success with metallics in the past and it could be a cool way to represent shifting colors as opposed to just painted on camo.

-

I would probably suggest going a little bigger and using the Shardcarbine barrels off the Scourges.

Sauragnmon wrote:
I would probably suggest going a little bigger and using the Shardcarbine barrels off the Scourges.

Which would look cool, yes, but I don't have any of those, so....

I would suggest the Shadow Warriors kit instead of the Glade Guard.

They're nice models but man are they showing their age, especially when it comes to their capes.

I recently converted some rangers, using Eternal guard and Dire avengers.
Torso/cloak from the Eternal guard (which requires a lot of cutting/filing, because some parts of the legs are attached to the cloak), legs and arms from the Dire avengers. I removed the barrel/catapult part of the guns, and replaced it with a plasticard rod to create a long sniping barrel. At the end of that rod I added the tip of a Harlequin star bolas (to create and eldary muzzle).
For the head, I used a harlequin head (without any hairpiece), and sculpted a hood on top. Then I filed off the Harlequin mask's mouth, so I can say my guys are actually Harlequin mimes.

The main issue I had (apart from my poor sculpting skills) was for posing: if I wanted to align the torso with the legs, then the legs would bump into the cloak. So I ended up with unnatural poses. Also, they tend to all be standing upright, while I wish I had a few of them kneeling like true snipers. Also, in the dire avenger kit, the bottom of the torso is a half sphere, which keys into the legs (like you have on most CWE or DE kits). But if you cut the Eternal guards' torsos just under the belt, you end up with a vastly different shape, so you need quite a lot of filling between the belt and the legs. I tried to hide my poor greenstuff work by gluing grenades/fancy bits to hide the joint, but it's not perfect.

My option is actually more expensive than buying rangers directly, but it might give people some ideas.

Edit: If I had to do it again, I would actually use shadow warriors instead of eternal guard, because it requires a lot less cutting/filing, and I suppose posing would be easier. I initially went with Eternal guard because I wanted to use the wilwood rangers heads: my plan was to remove the face and glue a harlequin mask inside, to avoid having to make greenstuff hoods. But my attempts failed miserably.

I could always put some bushes and small trees on 25mm bases and call them Rangers that are camouflaged.....just kidding, that's probably a bit tacky.

 Galef wrote:
I could always put some bushes and small trees on 25mm bases and call them Rangers that are camouflaged.....just kidding, that's probably a bit tacky.

I dunno, with the barrel of the rifle sticking out, that could be pretty cute!

I was actually thinking of using Harlequins torsos for Rangers, as I like the coats, with Wood Elf hooded heads and Guardian legs. Problem is the guns. That's always my biggest issue thinking of Eldar recipes because there are so few in plastic, my preferred medium. I've ordered the metal crouching Ranger so maybe I'll mix in a couple of Guardian helmets when I get around to building my squad.