New Dark Eldar Color Scheme try out

Well I have not been happy with how my dark eldar where turning out. I was trying a black and purple type color scheme and it just wasn't working out for me. Too dark, everything just kind of blended in to each other.

So after giving up on them for a night or two in frustration I began thinking of what else would work for them. In that though process I turned to one of my favorite book series of all time for inspiration, the sword of truth novels. In the novels there are a group of torturers called the mord sith. Their whole purpose is to capture the enemies of their lord and either simply remove them or get specific information from them. For those who have read the book I know thats not entirely accurate but I don't want to ruin it for others that might read it. Anyway one aspect of this group of enslavers and torturers that always stood out to me was that they would wear white leather as a sign that had complete control over their charges and that they would not have to spill the charges blood to keep them that way. Since the blood would show up on the white leather its a great mark of shame for any blood to appear on the white leather of the mord sith.

I decided to take this idea and run with it. I loved the idea of a group of warriors so skilled in what they do that, not only do they kill, they kill in such a way as to avoid getting any blood on them. If they do its a mark of shame and in Commorrah a mark of shame can often mean a mark of death. So I went about coming up with a white based color scheme. Of course white is a visually boring color so I added gold trim to the armor to spice it up a bit.

Now normally dark eldar wear flayed skins around their waists but this seemed to go against the whole "not getting gore on your armor" idea I was going with here. So I decided to paint it up as regular cloth. I went with purple just to give them a bit more color and help to not overdue the gold. The hair color was literary picked by asking others what general color would go good. After hearing blue from a good friend of mine (who's also a terrific artist) I gather together all my blue paint and grabbed a bottle at random. I'm happy with the way the hair turned out more or less.

The good:

• I was able to make the trim along the shoulder pad and legs fairly uniform and I think it turned out well
• The hair with the wash to give it some darker tones looks very nice when contrasted to her armor
• The detailing along the scabbard for the knife at her back worked better then I thought it would have

The bad:

• With the exception of the boots I originally tried a pure white washed with black and that did not work out at all. The armor looks messy, not off white. I tried something new on the boots to create a more uniform off white and it looks much better
• I still cant get the dark eldar pale gray ish skin tone down right. The one here is not bad but its not what I'm looking for
• The dry brushing of bolt-gun metal on the rifle was a bit to heavy to get the desired effect
• The model is not "done" its as done as it will be before it is stripped down and redone at a later date. this was a prototype to see if my scheme would look good... and it does!

questions, comments suggestions I would love to hear them!

See you in the webway!

Worlds Worst Wyches!!

So I had a 500 point doubles game tonight down at my friendly local game store and I have to say I have never seen my wyches perform so badly!

It was my dark eldar and a space marine player teamed up against a Necron and Tyranid player. It was a capture and control mission with both objectives being placed on the far right side of the board. Roll on the combat drugs was +1 attack which is always nice, getting 4 attacks on the charge can cause a bit of carnage. We were going second so I deployed my two raiders with the two units of wyches in them to the far left. On my first turn I moved the first raider 12 inches, dropped the wyches and ended up in combat with a group of 10 necron warriors. My wyches even with all their extra attacks kill 1 warrior and take 3 casualties in return. They break and the necrons are able to run them down. For those unfamiliar a D6 + 2 roll beat my D6 + 6 roll!! And just to rub sulfur into the already gaping wyche shaped wound the 1 warrior I killed gets back up.


Second turn rolls around and my other unit of wyches get into combat with a different group of necron warriors sitting on the opponents objective. My wyches attack and kill 2, the necrons kill three wyches in retaliation. My wyches break and are run down by the necrons again!

Third turn wasn't a waste however as the tyranid player out flanked a unit of 23 gaunts right next to our objective. On my turn my hommoculous walked onto the table, pulled out his liquefier gun and proceeded to turn 9 of them into glowing green ooze. Then the unit of space marines sitting on our objective turned around and say "welcome to the rapid fire cafe" and between the two of us we knock the unit down to 5 models left. They break, run towards their table edge and never bother anyone again. My partner also had a lucky shot as he was able to take down the Hive tyrant (I think) with a lucky shot from the storm bolter mounted on his pred tank.

The game ended in a tie, we couldn't take their objective and it seemed like they didn't even try to take ours. They just spent most of the game killing stuff which I suppose is okay. Had I been smart and moved a raider down into contest their objective rather then picking up my haemon we would have won but ce-la-vi.

Over all it was a fun game punctuated by a few first class examples of why I despise playing against children.

See you in the webway!

Razorwing Jet-fighter Update

So over the last little while I have been exclusively working on my razoring jet-fighter. And I am proud to say I have the thing more or less modeled the way I want. Only thing I have left to do on it is to model up some missiles, magnetize the missiles to act as counters for how many shots I have left. And figure out how to get the fighter to sit on the stand properly without having to glue it on. Unfortunately the jet is a bit ass heavy so its not sitting on those neat ball bearing stands very well. Without further ado here are some pics of my new jet.

The extra wings are held on by some green stuff, some plastic cement and then a layer of super glue along the top edge. The were a bit of a pain to attach but I think it adds to the overall feel of the model. Contrary to what I had posted in the first blog entry I ended up not using the nightspinners as housing for the dark lances and simply attached them straight into the fire prism/night spinner slots on the fire prism tank turret. 

Here is a shot from the back. Originally I wanted to have two separate engines on this thing but I couldn't find a way to attach them and the wings without a lot of extra work I wasn't exactly keen on doing.

For now the rest of this project is on hold till I get the rest of my Dark Eldar army assembled. Main reason being is I actually wanna get some games in with this thing finished or no. Shouldn't take to long to get a coat of paint slapped on this thing as I only need to assemble an archon, 5 incubi, a ravager, and two raiders. Then maybe I can focus on actually getting both my warriors of chaos and dark eldar painted? nah!