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.

Blood Angels Sanguinary Priest 2

I've been continuing to experiment with white. On this Apothecary, I used a light gray as the base color, with white highlights. I was concerned that it would turn out too dark, but it seems like it works out okay. Jen wants me to try using bone color as the base, but I'm afraid that it will make them look like Deathwing...

Eldar Pirate Captain

Here is the second model I acquired for my nautical/pirate themed army prior to the actual release of the Dark Eldar. It is a special character from the Dark Elves army (fantasy) that I intend to use as a squad leader. The squad will be a mix of parts from the new Dark Eldar warrior and the Dark Elf corsair models.
Of particular note; this model marks my first attempt at crystal swords. The instructions in WD 361 sounded very simple but were anything but during execution. The technique requires a lot of frequent, quick transition blends between extreme shades of color which were very hard to do on such a small surface area. Despite several redo-s, I'm happy with the results.
The base is supposed to look like the wooden planks from a ship and were actually made with wooden craft sticks that I "weathered" and stained with brown ink. The chain is from a necklace chain that I superglued together (to keep it from moving around) and then painted.
Although I like this model and feel it came out pretty good, I'm concerned by how dark it is. If all the models in my army come out this dark, it will not have the "pop" required to distinguish it from any other army; even if I did a good job at applying the paint. In essence, I need to stay away from black as much as possible and make sure my colored bits have extreme amounts of contrast.

Blood Angels Land Raider

I've been busy building up my Blood Angels army, and I couldn't resist the temptation of a flying Land Raider. I'm probably going to have to add one of the Land Raider variants at some point.

I didn't do a lot of customizing. This is the largest thing I've painted, so I was a little intimidated. I did add some bullet holes to the starboard side, and some weathering/damage to some of the leading edges (you know, from hard landings and such).

Eldar Pirate - Part Two

So, the paint job on the Pirate Lord is complete. I thought the sword looked big in the green-stuff stage, but it looks even bigger painted. I like it. Below is the image I used for the inspiration on the color scheme. I wanted a stormy seas and cartoon look.
I originally wanted to avoid black in this army since I think it lacks depth (since you can't shade it) but I couldn't imagine pirates without a healthy amount of black. As a compromise, I decided to go ahead and include black, but highlight with color (in this case blue) rather than the usually shades of gray. As with the Eldar, I'm sticking with the Non Metallic Metals. To kick up the painting a notch, I've decided to include color transitions in the highlights. For example; rather than blue highlighting to light blue, it will fade to a purple (see back of cloak). Below are the before and after shots. I still need to make a suitably fancy base to call this model complete.

Eldar-rrgh Pirates!

The Dark Eldar models are now available for advanced order and they are very attractive (http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat440160a&rootCatGameStyle=) . I intend to use these models, their new rules, and their hit and run nature as a basis for an Eldar Pirate army I've been contemplating for a while. The look of their new transports (Raider pic from GW web page below) make me both happy and sad. I was going to add sails to the models to match my pirate theme, but they've apparently beaten me to it. I'm happy they did such a splendid job on them, but I'm sad that I will no longer have that unique sail-look.

The actual composition of my army will include some of the DE models and some modified Eldar models. For example, I intend to use the Eldar ranger models for the base troops because I like the look of the long coats and loose clothes. Additionally, I wanted to do something special for the lord character that had a look of Eldar-gone-rogue. The plan was to merge an Eldar Farseer model with an empire noble model, add an elf head, and sculpt him a fancy tricorn hat and buccaneer sword. The images below show how the plan unfolded this weekend.

The messiest part of this project was the preparation of the metal Farseer and metal noble models. In the Farseer's case, I was lucky that the head model was not part of the main model but I still had to remove his skirt, below the belt (which is going to be replaced by the noble's legs). This required some precise grinding with the dremel tool for about an hour. The only thing I needed from the noble were his legs and his surgery was completed entirely with a hobby saw and exacto knife.The sculpting of the cutlass and tricorn were a blast. The cutlass is made mostly from plasticard that I shaped using the dremel's grinding wheel attachment. The tricorn hat was surprisingly easy and actually took me less than ten minutes. The base shape of a tricorn (or bicorn) hat is actually a circle. After sculpting an appropriately sized flat circle, I simply pressed it down over the top of the head and folded it up on three sides.
The next post will include this model fully painted and will demonstrate the color theme I intend to use for the army.