Shuriken cannon & co

After recently being asked to mix my army list up a bit for replay entertainment value, I dug into my unbuilt Eldar bits for options. Since I had done some eBay fishing, there is quite some stuff there.
On my hook I found a Fire Prism spure minus the crystal from the warp hunter kit. I've put that together with magnets and transparent plastic cut into the facets of the prism.
I also collected all the heavy weapon platforms for the guardians.  I have two different metal platforms. I suspect that the bigger ones might be an old version of the Vaul support battery. I'll magnetise the weapon bits so that I can swap between warwalkers, lords and the platforms.
I also found three old metal war walkers. That gives me the option to field two sets! :)

 

Edit: now assembled with magnets and base colours.  

To do: details, varnish, oil shade and basing. 

Jetbikes as model accessories

I'm currently looking at all non-wraith non-Serpent Eldar models which I have available. That includes a bunch of Eldar psychers. A key feature of farseers and warlocks is that they can buy jetbikes as upgrade.

So far I've only played spiritseers who don't have that option and a single farseer whom I stuck on a support weapon antigrav platform in lieu of the usual jetbike-farseer conversion.

With the option of a jetcouncil in mind, I started wondering if I cannot come up with a way to equip a regular farseer or warlock model with a jetbike. My idea is to make something like a scenic base in which the actual mini with its regular base is placed.

I've recently taken the first steps in casting resin in silicone molds. That gives me the option of scratch building a count-as jetbike base/model and then make as many casts of this as I need. Obviously, that idea prohibits the use of GW bits, but that shouldn't be a problem.

On the plus side, each psyker will be an official GW miniature and as such ok for playing in stores. Not a crucial aspect for me personally, but a nice bonus.

I've made a sketch and a play-doh mockup to visualize the proportions.

Eldar vs Orks 2950 Points

Yesterday I played a game at the local tabletop club. Agreed was 2950 points, no super-heavies, battle-forged, no special characters, no allies.

Army line-up.

 Sorry, I don't have the ork list.

Jetseer, mantle, warp-charge stone, two spiritseers.
4x 5 wraithguard with holo, ghost-walk serpents, 3 jetbikes. 6 Swooping hawks.
Knight w/suncannon, Knight w/wraithcannons, Lord w/ lances,
Warwalkers w/Scatterlaser+Shuriken. Fire Prism, Warp Hunter.

Mission Maelstrom of War: Spoils of War (pg 151). No night fighting. Mysterious Objectives (all turned out sabotaged on my side), Forests treated as dangerous terain according to terrain datasheets. Eldar win initiative and deploy, Orks seize initiative.

Turn 1.1 Orks

Orks rush forward with bikes, stormboys, boys and vehicles. One Truck fails it's terrain check and is immobilized. 

Turn 1.2 Eldar

Wraithguard get out of transports. War-walkers, serpents and wraithguard kill bikers. Fire Prism and Lance-Lord blow up Panza. Serpents cull the boys mob on the flank. Warphunter, Sunknight and jetbikes kill all but one stormboy. The second knight kills the last one to keep the objective clean.

Turn 2.1 Orks

Turn 2.2 Eldar

Turn 3.1 Orks

Turn 4 brought the centre-table knight down, the two groups then charged the Eldar line. Ork Commandos and the Dakka-Jet appeared from reserve. The commandos flanked in on the right behind the wraithguard, the Jet was positioned on the and wiped out the walkers.

We called the game at that point due to time. Eldar won by points (see counter dice on the ruin front left in the pictures).

Say Mon-keigh!

After finishing my guardians, I decided that it was time for a new group shot showing the painted models of my Eldar army.

Mind you, painted doesn't equal totally finished. ;-]

I'm very happy with the overall 'someone did that on purpose' impression. The combination of the harsh yellow and the amber oil shade yields a vibrant look with a lot of depth and definition.

Next up on the painting bench: warp spiders.

Swooping Hawks

My jump troops were unpainted and I picked them as small lot of minis to paint up. These are metal minis, assembled, primed and then hit with liquid mask. The liquid mask is brushed on and catches the yellow base coat on the bits that I want to be white or blue, since the yellow would be an issue there.

Base coat on, liquid mask off! Oops, I should have covered all hands, weapon parts and ornaments with liquid mask as well... Improvisation time!

Painted dark grey on wing struts, weapon barrels and pipes. Red on ankle ornaments. Blue hats. Metal on beaks and blue wash on the yellow ribbed part of the guns to turn those green. Tank brown and sand paint to prep the gems for Tamiya Clear Red. Then I applied a clear coat of varnish.

A day later I applied brown oil wash on the yellow parts and black oil wash on the white parts. I'm quite happy with the result.

Now another coat of varnish, Tamiya Red on the gems plus my alibi-basing and I'll dare count these as painted.

Oil shade

I have been reluctant to add shade to the bright yellow space elf models. Mostly that is inexpereince and not trusting myself with a brush to make smoth shades with that harsh a contrast.

To get a handle on this I bought some oil paints: black, umber and red for starters and some turpentine-replacement. The good thing about those is that when applied on clear varnish, they can be pushed around for a really long time compared to acrylic paints and shade. It also flows really nicely along ridges and into recesses.

The guadians I was working on got hit with clear varnish (actually Emsal Voll Glanz, a Johnson's Klear equivalent floor varnish). 24 hours later I got the oil paint mixed up, loaded up a brush I marked for use with oil paint and got going.

The picture below shoes how nicely the oil shade runs into the recesses outlining the guardian's sixpack.

A few days later I varnished the wraithguards and applied oil paint to them as well. For the picture below I grouped them all up and left one model from each group without the shade. These are marked with an X. The fact that they blend in quite well implies that the shade isn't a big addition, but when looking at the model up close, the shade really makes it look much more substantial.

I now varnished a wraith loard some war walkers and a bunch of rangers and will go for them next. Then I need to determine what I will finish this process with. Another coat of varnish, possibly matt or satin most likely.

Guardian brushwork

In the last two days I've painted some red details on the guardians calves, upper arms and some sashes. Today I spent time with edge-highlights on the guns and shoulders. I've not ever really done that yet, so I'm still enjoying loads of opportunities for improvement. ;-]

I painted some pendants in bronze, the soulstones in tank brown with a sand highlight and glued the heads back on. It took a bit longer to do this than it takes to sum it up.

 

I realize that there are some mold lines and rough spots left, but for a bunch of old models that I recycled it's not bad really. 
 

 Finally, I put on a clear coat of varnish in preparation for applying some oil shade. The varnish is drying now, strategically while I have to sleep and then work anyway. Maybe I should call that in preparation for experimenting for the first time with oil based shade, but hey. We'll see soon enough how it goes.

Guardians dusted off

Recently I had a moment to demold the guardians that accrued with various lots of secondhand Eldar. A moment lasting about five hours, but at least I hot most of the lines and assembly issues sorted out.

I hit the models with white primer, brown from below and then primary yellow from above. All Vallejo Airbrush.

The heads I broke off and stuck on paperclips. They also got white primer, followed by yellow for the face, covered up with liquid mask when dry. Then I hit the heads with white primer again. Blue all over, followed be blue with black on the lower rear and a burst of blue with white on the top. Then I removed the mask and colored the red eye lenses in with a pen.

  Yesterday I painted the shuriken catapults german grey. That is where these models are now.

I'm looking at going for a varnish coat and oil wash to pick out the details on the bodies, but have to visit my local art store for supplies first. :)

Spartan Progess

I've been making tracks. I cut 2mm thick plasticard to 1" wide strips, then separated them into segments, cut into the edges and then bumped out the bit inbetween using a chisel and a gentle tap with a hammer. Cleaning up with a knife afterwards. I clipped 4mm thick ABS rod into lengths to fit inbetween the segments and sliced thin plastic rod for the rivets. I glued the segments and the rod bits on thin stripes of plasticard for stability.

The tracks I made were one section long enough for the straight bits on the top and bottom of each track, a section of four segments for the next longer part of the track as well as a bunch of two segments and single segments.

Then put down sticky tape, put the track on them and a wall out of Lego bricks around them and poured mixed up silicone on the whole mess. This created a mold for the track sections. I don't have any pour-able resin at hand, only 2 component putty. The stuff I have left there is much more supple than green stuff or Milliput, but nowhere near as suitable for a pouring mold as a thin liquid would be. Ah well. =]

Straight away I wasted a fist-ful of the stuff since I underestimated the binding time. It gets spry really fast, say within 3-4 minutes of mixing the components. Not having any other use for the stuff, I cracked on anyway and filled th mold a couple of times. I should have more than enough track now, enough to pick and chose the less awful results. ;-]

I put two long, two four segment and two two segment bits on the model for the picture above. While the individual bits don't look too hot, the overall look is very close to what I wanted to achive. Not too shabby for a first try.

For the armament, I will use eight lascannon bits of which I have four so far. The spartan has a ridgelike shield ahead of the weapon mount. I'm thinking the rear part of the original track cover sliced in half might do nicely when extended with a bit of plasticard.

Chaos Land Raider Spartan.. I wanna make one!

While I've been spending most of my hobby time on my Eldar, I have not forgotten my Chaos Space Marines, my poor down-trodden traitor marines who are the red-headed scorned and neglected step-child of all the power-armor factions, not allowed to have any of the good stuff and having each of their own bits spiked with BS3 or appropriate substitute. Where was I... right!

When leafing through IA:Apocalypse, I noticed how awesome the Spartan Land Raider variant is. Not only does it carry 25 instead of a measly 10, but it also has more hull points and stronger weapons for a mere 3 marines more points. Less awesome is that I have three Citadel plastic land raiders. Two of which I bought as new kits before I understood that they are too expensive for what they do and one that came with a Grey Knights lot that I bought.

Google brought up this thread which has a very nice side-by-side view of the offical Forgeworld Spartan model and a plastic land raider. Very very close indeed. In fact, close enough to just go for using the Spartan rules with the plastic models. However, that wouldn't quite feel right. The rather obvious thing to do is to look at converting up the plastic model.

I figured that the mostly stripped Grey Knight land raider would be the optimal sacrifical test model. I ripped off the roof and the tracks before clamping it between two bits of wood which served as a guide and chopping it in half with a pull-saw meant for woodworking.

Then I took my clippers and scraper to some sprues and trimmed them down to strips. Plastic cement and wedging these in place between the two halves made quite a rigid connection. This picture shows most of them in place, I used a total of four in each corner of the hull.

I trimmed the roof part down to take engine cover and turret rings out. The Spartan tracks are supposed to be higher than the upper hull and overlap a bit, so the position of the proud bits of the roof has to be changed.

Which brings us to plasticard. I got some pieces ready to close the gaps in bottom, sides and roof. There will be additional pieces of trim to make it look less like the chop job it is.

Now I have to build up a ridge between roof and tracks, make tracks that look rough enough for the look, make the shield ridge for the spontoons and get enough laser cannons to make two quad-laser spontoons. Fun times! =]

I decided against the storm ramp that extends past the tracks on the original model because I don't want my variant to get stuck on everything and prefer it to climb over it using it's tracks. ;-]