Sunday, December 12, 2010

Dark Eldar Wych Hekatrix


I just finished the squad leader for my first unit of wyches. If you don't remember seeing this model advertised in White Dwarf, there is good reason. I have decided to model my wych squads with miniatures from the Warmachine line. Although GW did a much better job on their DE models this go around, I think their wych models look a little too butch. They intended the male/female heads/torsos to be interchangeable with the arms and legs and it does not work well. The arms and legs are very masculine and doesn't look good with the female bits. I found the above character model and a pair of squads under the Cryx line of Warmachine. One small problem is that they came with horns growing out of their heads, however, they are much more pirate-y. The above character has had the horns removed and a bicorn pirate hat sculpted over the holes. I have also added a pistol from the DE line to her left hand. Since the squad members won't be getting hats, I will have to cut off the horns and re sculpt the forehead and hair.
In the past, I was very hesitant to add non-GW parts to my army because the options were not pretty and GW would not allow them in their tournaments. The flood of new and talented companies to the market and the fact that GW no longer sponsors tournaments has removed those concerns.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Dark Eldar Pirate Ship


I finally finished my first Dark Eldar Raider and I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed. First of all, this was a very difficult model to paint due to all of the hard lines that had to be covered and the fact that it had to remain almost entirely disassembled during the entire painting process. Second, it ended up being a dark model even though I tried to mitigate this effect through high contrast. Third, the model is just not as sleek as the Eldar Wave Serpents I'm used to painting.
The blue to purple fade seems to have worked fairly well on the hull. I plan to repeat this theme on all the Raiders and use a blue to green fade on the Ravagers.
The original plan for the sails included a pair of masts with double sails but it turned out to be crowded when I put them in place. The gunner in the front was almost completely obscuring the art on the lower sail, so I decided to break them apart and only use the single mast, centered in the deck. I think I will go back to the two-mast design on the Ravager, to set them apart from the Raiders. However, I won't put art on the lower sails.
I think I'm going to move to troops for while, before returning to the vehicles. Next up, the wyches.