Eldar Wraithguards

Hey all, so continuing on my Eldar journey, I've finally started to paint more than just characters and got the Wraithguards I was supposed to paint last month. With the colours now settled I could get a little straight to the point.

Ondryel - Eldar Farseer

 

So this is month 2 of my painting challenge, doing an Eldar army in 6 months and although I completely missed the great plan I had built and the optimal list of entry, I still managed to paint one of the entries.

Now I originally meant to paint Eldrad Ulthran himself (well the model, not to use him as the big daddy) but poor planning, a global shortage of green stuff and late deliveries meant I had to adapt to still make it and therefore I picked the original Farseer, an absolute classic by Jes Goodwin of course.

The Eldar Avatar of Khaine

Hey everyone ! it's the end of January already but happy new year to all of you, hoping 2024 brings you as much happiness and achievement as you need !

So last year I foolishly let myself embak on a "tale of gamers" kind of challenge focused on 2nd ed 40k. After being tempted by tyranids but realising wi only had like half the points in models, I looked at the obvious choice, chaos, but I only have troops now left to aint so nothig to make a proper list of. 
Then some old friends came and knocked at the door after a 10 years hyatus : the Eldar.
It had been exactly 10 years since I last stripped and reassembled my army !

Amallyn Shadowguide, Asuryani ranger - Blackstone Fortress

 

Ok so still ploughing the Blackstone Fortress thread it seems and after finishing a few villains, I finally managed to get some of the colours I needed to finish Amallyn at last !

Note for later pandemics : you do NOT want to start a lockdown without some of the essentials like medium or some washes and you do NOT want to start with a colour when all your pots are partly dry...

Life in 2 colours - a painting exercise

And now for something completely different and a little unexpected, here's a little painting exercise ! I've decided to take part in a little online painting challenge a couple of weeks ago. The rules were pretty simple : the only pots available had to be black, white, turquoise and orange !

Working with a limited palette should be OK, I'm used to it I thought... And then reality struck me in the face...

If model painters are ranked from "tournament minimum 3 colours" to "master level multi awarded god" well.... I guess I'm firmly stuck somewhere in the grey area in between.

Now what drives my painting ?

Eldar Space Fleet

After showing you a bit of my work in progress the other day, I've finally decided to take the time to finish my Eldar fleet for the simple reason I want to move on to the Imperial one and many other projects !

Eldar space fleet in progress and some frills and fauna...

Back in December, some WIPsters and I vowed to go on a buying embargo. We've done that before and the idea is to basically stop buying and hoarding models  and to reduce the leadpile or at least stop its uncontrollable growth (saving a few coins in the process ideally).

Rogue Quest level Eleven - The exodite ranger

So this is it. The end of the first part of the Rogue Quest for me ! I'm reaching the 6th model and today's entry is the ranger ! 

The ranger is an essential class to my eyes in any good dungeoneering party and to represent that class I had plenty of opportunities. The 40k universe has plenty of scouts of all kinds and Jes Goodwin has sculpted some excellent eldar scouts. Of course eldars are a must as rangers as the ranger class is usually one favoured by wood elves. But if I had to choose an equivalent for wood elves in 40k, it would undoubtedly have to be an exodite...

Good thing is I just happened to have a model looking like an exodite scout and commissioned by no other than Axiom with whom I happen to share this Rogue Quest project ! The opportunity was too good to ignore.

The model is really nice and was sculpted by Patrick Keith (or Kirsten Dunst, don't know, always tend to mix those 2...). I had to slightly alter the model to adapt it to what I wanted though.

Design sketch by Axiom

For some reason I had decided I wanted the model to represent a female eldar. Just because. The pose was not spectacularly feminine and no real physical trait helped. That wasn't a problem though.

Merry Christmas - may the lead be with you

Merry Christmas to you all my fellow model addicts (or "Ferry christian" as the auto correction tool of my wife's phone seems to understand it).

I took the Christmas opportunity to speedpaint Sanity Claws yo can see below. 

All I can say about it is that I'm not happy at all with it and that speedpainting is not something I enjoy most (even though slow painting doesn't please much more) I'm an "efficient painting" kind of hobbyist I guess...

Watch him closely because he's going back to acetone to get ready for next Christmas...

And since all of you must be full of chocolate, turkey, duck, goose, gravy, foie gras and all sorts of light things, here is some naked lead to help you through this...

"Cockadoodledoo My liege " - Battle Bretonnia Part 5

OK, I had some littel time and spent it mainly on advancing on the famous rooster knight.

 Some straps and a saddle, some feathers added here and there to make it look a bit ore realistic, a pair of mushroom just to practice my "yellow dots on green" skill.

"Me and my giant cock are sworn to serve any lady in need !"

Priming is not very far form here, I just have to convert some lance for him with a magnet and add some reins (already placed some wire in the beak)

By the way, here is the way the bird is gonna look like : red crest, white feathers and blue legs, that's pretty much the best cicken you can get in France and is very particular to my region. Tailfeathers are gonna be bigger on my rooster but hey, its fantasy time !

What a REAL rooster looks llike

The khorne champion are actually taking little more time than expected because I decided to blackilne some of them around the armour plates to give a clearer aspect. They're not far from the ned though and I also started working on Kaleb which will be shown in little time too.

Also coming soon, the full review of the eldar pirates and maybe some army lists for both RT and 6thed just to see where all of this is going (might even want to make a 2nd ed army list)

I just have to open my eldar army suitcase and count everything that I have so far. Here is just a tease with the photo of one of the 3 floors in my suitcase : 

Cocoricooo Messire ! (plus some other silly things) - Bretonnia Part 4

OK, last time I told you about the "knight project" I started on the oldhammer forum (no longer Blood forum) and told you to have a look at Axiom's very good blog and involvment in that project. I feel being the initiator of that projects implies I should not get too late on the others, it's why I tried to make some progress on this.

If you remember previous posts, I decided to mount my Knight on a rooster for it is the symbol of my Region on France (Bresse). I found a perfectly fitting model here and found out the scale was exactly what I was looking for. These are made in some kind of hard rubber or soft plastic with paint on top. 

I tried to remove the paint with a 3 weeks Dettol bathbut couldn't remove any paint from it. I decided to dip a part of it in acetone to see the result and the paint immediately began to fall off. It just took a few dips in acetone to remove the paint with a toothbrush (I would not recommend a long bath of acetone since it seems the rubber/plastic melts slowly in it).

Next step was to remove the silly details at the feet (this is mainly grass and branches sculpted next to the legs to make them more sturdy since the rubber is not rigid enough) removing these made the model fall apart so I just pinned in the legs and added some wire and now it stands proudly on its 2 feet. I will have to sculpt back the legs properly with GS but no big deal here.

The giant rooster waiting for a rider

 As you can see, the sculpt is quite good fro a rubber touy and I hope the paintjob will make it look convincing.

Now, for the rider part, I chose the easy way over the oldschool way and ordered a plastic pegasus knight to ride the bird. As the legs come in 2 parts , this enabled me to glue them a little wider than normal to fit exactly to the chicken body. The upper part of the model has then just been glued slightly orientated to the left and I put a "Louen Leoncoeur" on top of it. I'm considering adding magnets to the right arm to be able to choose from magic sword, lance or even the arm holding an eagle.

Some decoration wil come after that in the form of a blanket and some treasures in his back. I will also add a saddle with leather straps to attach it to the chicken. Maybe some decoration in the feathers could do the thing but I will sort that out as it takes shape.

Oh and the total cost for the parts is 3.5£ for the rooster, 2.5£ for the knight parts and 0.5£ for the base which mlake it a very cheap project for once ;).

So here is the Rooster knight for the time being...

Another thing that got my attention recently was the stripping and basing of some old eldar pirates. A few Ebay purchases here and there, got me to get some of the models I didn't already have.

Amongst them is the eldar captain with a demon mask. This is one very interesting model. It's actually built from the more classic captain you can see on the left in the picture below. But if you look at the cpatain on the right carefully you can actually see that all the details have been added on top of the other details. You can see the soulstone under the left horn and you can even see the remnants of the left holster under the bag with a face. Seeing models with common parts is no surprise in these ranges but I was more used to seeing parts used for several models. This time it's just the same model but with lots of things on top (plus an arm swap).

 

 

Rogue trader eldar Captain (sculpted then converted by Jes Goodwin)

 

But what to do with that particular model. For some reason I want this army to be compatible with both Rogue trader rules and 6th ed and I wanted a normal leader. This means an autarch for the 6th ed rules. I remembered reading about autarchs in the compilation book so I gave a quick look yesterday but couldn't find anything. It does say some exarchs can change aspects and wear gear from multiple aspects but I couldn't find the actual word "autarch" in the book. Maybe I dreamt of it, I'll have another look. If any of you know if it's actually really in there, please tell me. Another things is I want to equip the guy as the model is but couldn't understand the true advantage of an autarch in 6th ed (if anybody knows please tell me, what's a good use for an autarch equipped like this guy?).

If I don't find a use for him as an autarch he will make a perfect dire avenger exarch.

Anyway, I decided to put this little fella on a nice base with some shale I looted from my hollidays hunt (remember this post). These shale pieces proved worthy since you can easily break them with bare hands to the shape you want and they can be drilled with no effort. I even believe drilling is essential because I think just gluing them means it'll break in no time.

BUT, pinning a mini to its base means cutting off its tab and You know this is 1st class heresy right?

Eldar captain on base

 I found a way to concile both the hobbyist and the archiver in me : I just cut the tab off but glued it under the base to keep it as a souvenir :

Now I still have the model and its tab to remember this model is just 6 years younger than myself...

On the painting range, the Khornish boys are very close to being finished, the final details awaiting a bit because I decided unexpectedly to add freehand on some of them to make them more sexy. Here's the bunch as they were yesterday night and next time you're seeing them , it's gonna be party time with varnish and complete basing !

The last brothers of filth and an invitation - Battle Chaos Part 21

Ok, so for today, Here are some of what I expect to be the last crappy pictures of my Nurgle Warband. I hope to achieve a better photo studio (one I wouldn't move or break all the time with a proper camera)

The first is the one holding the grenade launcher. This one has greatly suffered with the loss of a shoulder some 17 years ago. At the time I was completely obsessed with 40K and tried to alter everything to make it look futuristic. This lad here got his shoulder replaced with a marine shoulder pad (now I reapaired it with a plastic marauder one) and he had a backpack with guitar strings to link it to the gun. This version is a desperate attempt at reapairing this non sense :

 This one is a very special one for me since it's the first Nurgle champion I got which also makes him one of the very first lead minis I got in 1990. This is the 3rd time I paint him and it's always a pleasure to spend some time with him. It looks like anything you want, it could be a sorceror or a warrior or a marauder, anything...

This time I painted the skin green although I terribly wanted to avoid it. I don't know why I didn't, I'm weak...This version is nonetheless the most realistic version of him, the first version of him had its fly parts painted red and the use of purple made it stand a lot on the gametable. The satin varnish kils every constrast on this picture though.

 Apart form the various projects I talked about in previous posts, I found myself wanting to start my eldar force from scratch. Evreything has been stripped and repaired. It consists of a mixture of Rogue trader stuff and 2nd ed. I tried to modify as much as I could because some minis had been damaged and some others needed a serious makeover.

This army will be a challenge in the fact I want it to be fit for both Rogue trader and the last version of 40K. SInce I haven't played the new rules for the latest eldar coedx, I still don't see how to play a good autarch (I know I want one) and fex other things but anyway, rules will come second as they always do in my armies. Bad-ass look and good models come first.

My Eldrard was designed to emphasise the fact he is old and most certainly relying on his staff to stand as much as for its powers

The eldar dreadnaught because I thought the only options of pose would look silly. I may have overdone it with his "hey guy" look but I like the fact he looks like he's leading some people on the front.

I'm looking for a real retro paintjob on this one with lots of red and bone but I still don't know wether I want a bone armour with red helmet or a ed armour and bone helmet... The aspects warriors will also have the same colour device with slight alterations to remind of their original colours.

At last, I would like to have your attention if you are willing to play some nice game in the most pleasant and oldhammery way and you are around Grenoble in France, here is the way. If you aren't you probably might find other groups of the same kind.

If you don't know about the oldhammer community, let's just say that if you fancy good narrative non-competitive gaming and you have some little nostalgia on the good ol'days of GW, then you might have found the right place.

Don't take my word on this one, click on the logo on your right to get what it's all about.

Next post is about Kaleb since I just finished the mini with all options before he goes on the painting range, that and a silly rooster who might become the most heroic chicken ever...