Wednesday 26 January 2011

Kabalites

Yeah, I'm slow at getting through these guys! Still, first 5 warriors painted. Banner design is copied from one in the Dark Elf book.





Monday 24 January 2011

DE Webway List ideas


Ok, so at the moment my Dark Eldar are a fairly standard mechanized list. Everyone in boats, boats get them where they need to be.
However, since I first saw the Dark Eldar codex I've had a hankering to try a webway portal based army. It looks like it would be fun and unique to play. Less vehicles to paint wouldn't hurt either!

Working off some of the rumours as to what's going to be in the next wave of DE miniatures, I built the following list. 1500, naturally.

"Wave 1"
2 Haemonculi, each with webway portals, liquifier guns (95 each)

2 lots of 9 warriors, blaster and a raider (156 each)

Ravager (105)


"Wave 2"

Archon, Agoniser, Shadow Field, Combat drugs, Haywire Grenades (125)

15 Wyches, Haywire Grenades, Hekatrix with Agoniser (210)

6 Reavers, 2 Heat Lances, 2 Cluster Caltrops (196)

5 Scourges, 2 Haywire Blasters (130)

Talos Chain Flails, Extra CC Weapon, TL Haywire blaster (130)

Cronos Spirit Vortex (100)


1498 total

Some of the wargear probably needs tightening up, and I'm not sure about the scourges, but overall it looks like it would be a fun list to play. What do you guys think?

Sunday 16 January 2011

Plastic Archon, or getting the most from your Raider kits

One of my first and greatest 40k loves were, and still are, the Orks. I don't play them much at present, generally preferring the quick but fragile fighting style of the pointy eared race. However the Mekaniak spirit of attempting to bolt lots of different things together to form something new and hopefully better prevails.

The Dark Eldar range is fantastic for this. Lots of plastic kits with lots of different options means lots of different spare parts. The raider kits, especially, can be looted for spare heads, torsos and legs. This, coupled with my desire for an all plastic army, led me to build a plastic Archon.

First things first, gathering the bits. Archon armour isn't too different from regular warrior armour, so I figured with a few extra fancy bits (say, a cape), a dynamic pose and some nice equipment, I could make something suitably leader like. It's generally a good idea to blu tack your parts together before getting the glue out, so you can try out the pose and look of the figure before you commit. This is my first draft, if you will.



The parts used should be fairly obvious. The corsair cape needed a bit of hacking up to get it to fit with the Dark Eldar torso (and a bit more hacking up to get the head to fit), but nothing terribly drastic. I added the guardsman helmet because, hey, who doesn't love giving the Imperial Guard a good killing?



Here she is from another angle. At this stage (after some good feedback from others) I was able to figure out a few problems. Firstly, the partly squatting pose looks a bit off, so I moved her to be standing on top of a pipe. More dynamic, and balancing on something makes her pose look a bit more natural. Secondly, it was suggested that I shift her to be looking the other way. I'd not considered this, but when I tried it, I found the miniature flowed a lot better. The only major thing I needed to consider was the direction of her hair. Some needed trimming from her head, which was fairly fiddly, but a sharp knife and being careful saw my foray into plastic hairdressing a success. Some glue and a few extra bits and my new Archon is ready for the painting queue.



So, there you go, a fairly simple conversion, made entirely from spare parts, but in the end a nice dynamic miniature (I hope). Alls well that ends well.



I'm not the only one who's doing this, mind you. I came across this example that had been cooked up on a forum I frequent. Check it out:


Archon/Duke Siliscus conversion by Halos Nach Tariff

Somewhere, in the depths of my fantasy bitz box, a lone Dark Elf Corsair is complaining that someone has stolen his cloak. He's crying and says that he's cold. All his friends are laughing at him. Screw that guy though, it's his own fault for not being assembled yet.

Tuesday 4 January 2011

Reaver Jetbikes



Well, I gave it more thought than was probably healthy, but I settled on the red scheme that I was pondering. Well, a variation of it, anyway. Thanks to anyone who gave an opinion; it all helped.
I switched out the red gore used in the test figure for blood red. I finished it off with a wash of baal red too, which makes the colour a lot more vibrant than my original. The bikes took a while, but infantry should be a lot quicker. I'm going to start on a squad of warriors next.