Dark Eldar Reaver Jet Bikes

The above image shows two of the six Reaver Jet Bikes I completed recently. I learned my lesson on jet bike squad size from the Eldar and six is near optimum. With fewer, they get destroyed/broken in one round of mediocre shooting and with any more they become too much of a point sink. I will eventually have two squads in the army--each of them with slightly different paint schemes. This squad has the blue on top and purple on the sides. The next squad will reverse those colors. The color of the riders will remain the same.
These new Dark Eldar Jet Bike models are gorgeous. The detail of the sculpt and the manner in which they are assembled is amazing. Unlike the Raider (tank) that had to be painted in seven different parts, I could completely assemble the bike and the rider before painting them. This makes it easier to coordinate shadow and shine direction across the entirety of the model and prevents wasted time spent painting parts that eventually get covered during assembly.
Although the non-metallic metal paint technique I used on the blades and engine nozzle were the most complicated parts of the model, I'd have to say that hard-lining all of the edges is what made them so time-consuming to paint. There are joints, ridges, and sharp pointy bits all over the bike and rider that required lots of attention.
The whole Dark Eldar line shares the ultra-edginess and its not uncommon to see nice-looking models painted with attention given to only the edges. The model is spray painted a dark color like dark blue or black and then all the edges are painted with a very bright or white color; nothing else. If the lines are straight and even in thickness, they will look great on table. I just love to add fades so the hard-line-only option was not going to work for me, but even the GW staff painters have been recently and frequently using this style.

Dark Eldar Corsair Warriors

The above image shows the first 7 of 10 Dark Eldar Warriors in my pirate army. Once again, I believe that GW did a great job redoing the Warrior models for the Dark Eldar in this release, but they just don't have that special look I'm going for. Consequently, I've combined the bodies from the Fantasy Dark Elf Corsair models with the arm parts from the 40k Dark Eldar Warriors to create a Renaissance-Sci-Fi look. I think they fit together quite well.
The colors are very similar to the wyches from previous posts and I'm happy that these, too, did not come out dark. There is no doubt that I've committed to that cartoon style with the high-contrast purple hair. I wouldn't be surprised if many were not fans of the green and purple, but I'm going to stay true to my theme. With all the units beside each other, the scheme is very attention getting and I like it.
I need to finish the last three from this squad and then I'll probably give my first Reaver Jet Bike squad a go.

Hard-Liners Dice

Well the dice are in. Sorry for the mediocre picture, the lighting availible at night is never sufficent to get a great picture. I think they turned out great!

Christmas Dwarf Pilot from Scibor

I picked this up and painted it for Jen as a Christmas present. It's a resin model from Scibor. It took a bit of work to get the model together. The door had a lot of extra resin, and the top of the ornament did not have the nice loop you see there, I had to add that. On the back, I free-handed the date. I wanted to do more freehand, but I ran out of time. I can't wait to paint the Easter Dwarf I also picked up....

Eldar Pirate Wyches

The first squad of wych models is complete. I limited the black to just their boots and I am pleased that they did not turn out as dark as the previous models. I also think that the excessive contrast I was trying to achieve worked and they have that cartoon look that I like. I love the look of the blue hair and the way it allowed me to nicely place all three colors (green, blue, and purple). Its hard to see but the purple is subtly used as the highlight color on the mostly-black boots.

Some quick notes on the models themselves. First of all, I think the costumes on these Warmachine models perfectly match the pirate theme I am looking for in my army much better than the skin tight leather look by GW. Warmachine is very steam-punk-ish so I guess its natural that my renaissance-pirates-in-the-future was a good fit. The models come armed with razor flails; which are one of the DE wyches actual weapons. Unfortunately, they are not available to the whole squad so I'll play them as though none of them has one. Nevertheless, it provides the right look. Removing the horns and then resculpting the hair was not as bad as I was anticipating. If you look close, you would see that the original sculpt has been changed, but its not obvious from a normal viewing distance.

This squad took about 3 weeks to paint. I was hoping to take a finished DE army to this years NOVA Open in September. I'm worried that I won't get it done in time. I still have one more squad of wyches, one squad of warriors, 12 reaver jet bikes, 10 elite warriors (I'm going to use modified Eldar scouts), 5 more skimmer tanks, and 2 venoms (if they get released in time). The math does not look good. Maybe I'll find a technique that speeds up the tank-painting time.

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.

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.