Painted Venom #1

I've finally made some progress !

I've painted a couple other test models, trying to find other color schemes but this was going nowhere, so I decided to stick with the first variants and start painting the army itself. I thought I would start with vehicles to make some progress quickly (IMHO, painting squads gets boring rather quickly, and a half-painted squad isn't good for the motivation) so I took a Venom and improvised this in a couple hours:

This is the first time I'm doing any serious freehand on a model. And my first time painting a vehicle as well, actually ! It's not 100% finished (red on black requires so many layers to appear "clean"...), but it's already good enough for tabletop, I think.

Oh, and as you can see, there is a small conversion: The guns were re-positioned under the wings.All my venoms are converted this way. I'm always taking the extra splinter cannon (who isn't ?), and the placement of the guns in the original configuration seemed weird to me. Plus, I didn't like the gunner :)

I haven't bothered hiding magnets for the passengers like I did on the Raiders, and I don't think I will: too much work for small gain.

My Favorites Dark Eldar Armies

I'm still alive! Been too busy with work (and videogames) recently to update this blog. An update is due.

Sadly, nothing new to show; I did try a new paint scheme, but... my cat stole my test model. Seriously, he did. It was an orangish, very bright theme, completely different than regular Dark Eldar. I liked it, but it didn't suit my DE pretty well anyway.

So, instead of posting a picture of my own progress in painting, I've thought I'd post links to my current favorites Dark Eldar armies out there! Here they are, in no particular order:

• Rant in E Minor : Simple dark paint scheme (really close to what I'd like for mine), the light effects are simply awesome.
• The Brush Brothers Archon and Succubus : Not a full army, but again a simple scheme with awesome light effects. The purple is a great choice to complement the dark armor.
• Graphigaut : Frenchie with an interesting technique. Intense highlights, not for everyone - I hate his raider, but I love the rest.
• Daith's Wych Syren : Another single miniature over at CMON. I love the color choices here. On his blog you can also find this Archon. I don't like the color scheme as much as the Syren, but the B&W picture is a great idea to show the highlights.
• Darkezekiel's Scourges : Apparently won Bronze in a GD Germany. Superb blending, nice constrast between the armor, clothes, eyes and wings. 
• SuicideBadger : Simple & gritty. Very effective!
• MrChaos's Raider : Not an original paint scheme, but perfect execution. My jax dropped when I saw that sail for the first time.
• Speedfreek's Harlequinade Macabre : Simply the best and most original Dark Eldar conversions & painting ever. He has a theme and he sticks to it. Truly an inspiration for us all.  (See also his photobucket gallery) 
• VanSan : There are too many good Dark Eldar project logs on Warseer to mention them all, but this one deserves it ! From the freehands on the vehicules to the highly contrasted models and very detailed snow bases, this has it all. 
• Eye Of Terror : Epic conversion and a very cool paint scheme. Can't recommend a single post, the whole thing is incredible.
• Eldar Addict : A very original paint scheme, and he even published a tutorial to replicate it!
• (Edit) Legio Minimus : I had forgotten about this one ! Classical scheme, but masterfully executed with awesome bases.

That's all for now. If you feel like this list is missing an awesome entry, add a comment !

Kabalite Warrior Test Scheme #2

So, this is more or less the same scheme as the first one, actually. I just adjusted the highlights (still quick&dirty, I don't want to spend too much time on a test model - seeing the picture now, I realized I even forgot the properly highlight the boots) and shading to make the model more contrasted. And of course, this time even though the lightning still sucks I did a proper white balancing and used a real camera and not just my phone :-)

Is it better ? worse? Tell me what you think. I still want to test other completely different schemes, but I kinda like this one.

Kabalite Warrior Test Scheme #1

Finally some painting :-)

Testing the waters, I have a bunch of extra warriors & wyches from the various vehicules (still need to post some pics of how I magnetized/converted the Venoms btw) that I'll be used to test various paint schemes.

Here is the first test. Painting was very quickly, just as a proof of concept.

Primed black, and then:

• Bodysuit is Charadon Granite with a watered Badab Black wash, some Codex Grey added in the mix for some blending (which you can't really see on the picture)
• Armor is the same, but with a less watered wash. Codex Grey edge highlighting.
• Cloth is Mechrite Red, then Blood Red, Devlan Mud wash, Blazing Orange highlights
• Eyes, gems are, IIRC, Dark Angels Green, then Goblin Green, then Scorpion Green touch.
• Silver parts are Boltgun Metal, washed with Badab Black, Chainmail highlights

It's very very simple, and I think it works nicely. Still, will be testing different schemes in the coming weeks.

A 2000 pts list and some after-action thoughts

Played a 2K match today and had a blast! It was Capture & Control against a doublewing Dark Angels list with no vehicules.

My opponent managed to seize the initiative and proceeded to wipe my 3 ravagers, 2 Venoms, 2 Raiders and some embarked units on turn one. Epic! I managed to come back in the game after that and barely won in the end thanks to one Reaver Jetbike contesting his objective (should have been a draw, he made a small placement mistake allowing my jetbike to come close to his objective - had we played another turn it would have ended in a draw).

I didn't use Sliscus and his squad much, they killed a ravenwing squad early but didn't do anything afterwards, they were too far from the action.I should have re-embarked them to move them around but didn't. Bad move on my part.

One blaster-trueborn squad was almost wiped out turn one, the other proceeded to kill a couple units during the game. They had no vehicules to kill, but the Terminators were a nice fallback target :)

One Wyches squad was wiped early, the other, like Sliscus, were useful early on but I also forgot to re-embark them and they spent the whole game trying to reach the other objective... just in time to get slaughtered by Assault Terminators during the last turn (I had hoped that with the full squad, Furious Charge, 1 Attack from the drugs they would put enough wounds on them, but they passed all their saves and I didn't).

The Kabalite Warriors stayed on my objective the whole game, shooting at everything in range. Not a very agressive way of playing them, but it worked.



I quite like the list. Most of it functioned well, I learned from my mistakes. I really don't want to start spamming Kabalite Warriors in Venoms, so I won't change the core. I think I'll remove the special weapons from the wyches and add Shock Prows to the Raiders, it could be useful to contest objectives. Need to play against some form of razorspam now to see how bad I would do.

The list I played (1997 pts):

Duke Sliscus the Serpent (150pts)

3 x Kabalite Trueborn with 3 x Blaster, in Venom w/ Splinter Cannons (146pts)
3 x Kabalite Trueborn with 3 x Blaster, in Venom w/ Splinter Cannons (146pts)
4 x Kabalite Trueborn with 2x Shardcarbine, 2 x Splinter Cannon, in Venom w/ Splinter Cannons, Grisly Trophies (148pts)

10 x Kabalite Warriors with 1 x Blaster, 1 x Splinter Cannon in Raider with Dark Lance (175pts)
10 x Kabalite Warriors with 1 x Blaster, 1 x Splinter Cannon in Raider with Dark Lance (175pts)
10 x Wyches with 1 x Shardnet and Impaler, Hekatrix with 1 x Agoniser, in Raider with Dark Lance (200pts)
10 x Wyches with 1 x Shardnet and Impaler, Hekatrix with 1 x Agoniser, in Raider with Dark Lance (200pts)

6 x Reaver Jetbikes with 2x Heat Lance (156pts)
6 x Reaver Jetbikes with 2x Heat Lance (156pts)

1 x Ravager with 3 x Dark Lance, Nightshield (115pts)
1 x Ravager with 3 x Dark Lance, Nightshield (115pts)
1 x Ravager with 3 x Dark Lance, Nightshield (115pts)

A couple Dark Eldar army lists...

I haven't had the chance to play many games with my Dark Eldar yet, but I still want to share my thought on the couple lists I've been playing with.

A general note: all lists were built for friendly games, you wan't find Venom Spam here. Besides, I wouldn't have the models for the Venoms :-) (I'll wait for the official models in June, don't want to convert)

1000 pts - Quick & Dirty Baron List

105 Baron Sathonyx

185 10 Hellions, Helliarch w/ Agoniser (Baron joins this squad)
180 9 Wyches, Hekatrix w/ Agoniser in Raider
160 10 Warriors, Splinter cannon in Raider
160 10 Warriors, Splinter cannon in Raider

105 Ravager
105 Ravager

I initially built this list for team play, 2x1000 vs 2x1000, but also used it in solo. As you probably guessed, the major weakness is in the anti-tank department: all the anti-tank is on the vehicules, kill the vehicules and I'm in trouble. This was my first list and it really showed me how fragile Dark Eldar were.

The Baron adds nice buffs to the Hellions, and making them troops helped a lot, but they died pretty much every time they went into combat. T3, 5+ save means it can be quite hard to survive any combat in which you don't wipe out the enemy before he can strikes back. I somewhat expected that and gave them an Helliarch with Agoniser, but that wasn't enough in some games. Their Splinter Pods are deadly though, and in a table with 25% terrain they can move & stay in cover relatively well.
The wyches did their job (tarpitting or killing stuff in 2 turns) pretty well in most games, and as expected they were wiped out in every game.
The warriors were the most important unit: usually I just dropped all 10 in cover in the middle-field, and shoot every infantry trying to get close. The number of poisoned shots combined with cover was nice. A couple times they hijacked an empty Raider and went to secure an objective.



150 Duke Sliscus

156 9 Warriors, Blaster in Raider
175 10 Warriors, Blaster, Splinter cannon in Raider
180 9 Wyches, Hekatrix w/ Agoniser in Raider
180 9 Wyches, Hekatrix w/ Agoniser in Raider

156 6 Reavers, 2 Heat Lances
156 6 Reavers, 2 Heat Lances

115 Ravager w/ Night Shields
115 Ravager w/ Night Shields
115 Ravager w/ Night Shields

This list was designed to test the other units I had. So reavers, more wyches, and the Duke. I had another variant with more upgrades and another with the trueborn, but decided to try something simpler first, with a 3rd Ravager to fill the points.

The results were interesting. I tried to play more agressively with the warriors. The first unit stayed in its vehicule most of the game, rapid-firing anything it could with the Duke's poison bonus. It was nice, but the lack of Splinter Cannon was annoying. The Duke himself failed to impress in CC, but its bonuses were really interesting.
The Reavers... died after killing a couple armored targets. I need to play them more.
The Night Shields on the Ravagers did wonders. Everytime they are mentioned in forums and blogs, someone intervenes to say they are useless because Dark Lances have 36" range and <insert favorite weapon here> has 48" range. In reality though, games are not played in a vacuum. The units with those 48" weapons may not be your target. They might have other things to shoot. The nights shields are for the other threats. Removing 6" was awesome, it meant a lot of units could not fire at all on the ravagers, forced my opponent to act differently, to take more risks when moving to make sure he would be in range, etc. On the other hand, the 3rd Ravager felt like a waste of points, maybe I should have tried it with Disintegrators instead.

That's all for now. I still need to play more games, try a lot of units and upgrades, etc. Hopefully I'll have time to write up an AAR next time I play.

Heroes of Armageddon

Not a real update ; things have slowed down considerably now that I've started working again, and I don't want to start painting yet anyway, as I promised myself to finish painting my Blood Angels jumpers army first. I did get some games with the Dark Eldar but didn't feel like taking notes or publishing battle reports yet. I'll certainly do that in the future though.

But today I want to talk about Heroes of Armageddon. The largest Charity Project ever done in the modeling/gaming community (their words :). I suspect every wargamer on earth will soon know about this from various other blogs, but I wanted to link to it because it really sounds awesome, and, well, the only thing I can do to help right now is spread the word!

Reavers

More unpainted stuff! This time Reavers. I love those guys, and even though I'll probably always run the trusted 6 Jetbikes with 2 Heat Lances setup, I magnetized all the options. Here are the pics:

 A standard bike...

 ... which can be changed to an Arena Champion with Agonizer! (Arm, Head, Jetbike fin are magnetized)

I also converted the bikes with the special weapons. I wanted them to look more aggressive, but also to have an easier way to distinguish them from the others while they were not painted (the gun isn't easy to spot from a player's view). So I added some extra blades :

Note the extra magnet at the bottom of this last pic. It's for the Cluster Caltrops or Grav-Talon upgrade, which I didn't take a pic of. On the 3 other bikes I magnetized I hid the magnet a little more, this one was my prototype.

Bonus pic: the weapons rack, featuring blasters and splinter rifles :)

And of course, the flight stands were magnetized as well. This time, I kept the new ball stand, I just cut/filed one half of the ball and glued the magnet. This way I can keep the cool & weird angles while still using magnets for easier storage/transport.

A simple Archon conversion

A pretty simple conversion again. I changed my mind a few times with him: I originally built the Archon with just the Agoniser, Blast Pistol and Phantasm Grenade Launcher, and then decided to magnetize the PGL and the pistol.

This morning while looking in my bitz box to see if I had something interesting to make a Klaivex for the Incubi I had just received, I found this serpent-looking thing, which is an instrument for the Dark Elf Corsairs musician. A few minutes later, a new Archon was born :) I had to glue the PGL to make it work, and in a weird way, but I kinda like it. It goes very well with the Duke conversion, so I can say he's part of the Duke's pirate force and play him when I'm tired to the Baron or the Duke as HQs.

Converted trueborn squad with blasters

It seems no Dark Eldar army isn't complete without its 3-men blaster squads... I've made 2 squads of them, each with 3 blasters.

Conversion-wise, it was pretty straightforward:

• Helmets are from the Wyches and the Reavers sprues
• Blades from Dark Eldar Corsairs weapons were added to their backs (one squad with the larger one on the right, one squad with the larger one on the left)
• Blasters were made from shredders and disintegrators. Here are the instructions I posted on Warseer to make them a couple months ago (using the terms from the weapon pictures in the codex):
  
  • Cut the disintegrator "disperser muzzle"
  • Cut the shredder "ammunition pack"
  • Cut the shredder's end after the "compression barrel"
  • Glue the disintegrator's disperser muzzle to the shredder's end
  • Bonus: Cut the "gyro-pod" of the diintegrator and glue it where you removed the shredder "ammunition pack"
• You may also notice the trueborn in the middle has a non-standard pose. It's actually a hanger from the Ravager kit: since every Ravager comes with the 3 normal hangers, I've got quite a few extra warrior bodies ; in fact, between the Ravagers and Raiders, I've built a total of 10 extra warriors/trueborns, while still having enough hangers to represent the unit inside each transport!

Storing the Ravager and Raider

Just a quick separate pic to show how I'm storing my magnetized Ravager and Raider. The foam is a V2H tray from Kr Multicase, and you can fit 4 of them in one of their card cases.

As you can see, it's a tight fit (there is some room for optimization still) but I can have 2 Ravagers/Raiders in one tray. Since I have 4 Raiders and 3 Ravagers that even leaves some empty space that I'm reserving for 2 Venoms later, when GW releases the model (hopefully it will be small enough to fit).

Magnetized Ravager

Here are the ravager pics. Well, the only interesting ones really, since the rest is just the same as the raider. The top and bottom of the gunner are magnetized, and everything just falls into place very well. Again, I glued the gun and will eventually magnetize the barrel end if I ever decide to field disintegrators. 

Magnetized Raider

I'm a big magnets fan. For two reasons: one, keeping everything as WYSIWYG as possible, and two, make transportation and storage easier. So of course I had to magnetize the Dark Eldar Raider. Here are the pics:

Raider side view, note the magnet instead of the spike on the far right. Half of the little holes where the spikes go have been replaced with 2mm magnets to attach hangers or torment grenade launchers. You may also notice the lack of banner and extra spears with trophies: I don't intend to use the former at all (Don't like the look), and I'll magnetize the latter to represent Grisly Trophies in the future.

Close up on the 2 front hangers. This is a wyches' Raider, so I've used the normal Warrior hangers but gave them close combat weapons, spears etc. They all have one feet in contact with a magnet, and their hanging arm was repositioned to accommodate this change from the default position.

A naked Raider with every magnetized part removed.

And the parts in question. Note that the gunner is glued to its gun, because I don't intend to run Disintegrator Raiders at the moment. If I ever need to, I'll just cut the gun before the end of the barrel and magnetize the two different barrels.

Alternative front gunner using one of the hangers legs (I had tons of them since every ravager comes with the 3 hangers too!) instead of the normal static one. I like this pose a lot!

View from the underside. A big 6mm magnet sits where the stand goes.

The (dirty :) flight stand. The magnet is a ring, 6mm diameter with a 2mm hole, it fits perfectly in the old flight stands, or in the new ones with a little bit of hobby knife work. I really wanted a ring there to make sure the magnet wouldn't go off even if the stand fell or something.

And that's it! I'll try to post the Ravager and transport foam pics tomorrow.

Duke Sliscus Trueborn squad conversions

I originally wasn't sure if I would made Duke Sliscus alone or with some bodyguard unit, but I had some trouble finding a bits site that had one corsair cloak in stock and that wasn't too expensive. So I got a whole box, and well, I had to use the remaining cloaks!

Only made one picture since it's still a work in progress, but I'm pretty happy with the result so far. Their splinter rifles were shortened to make shardcarbines and I couldn't decide whether to keep their backpacks or not, so I made some without and some with. Both approaches needed some cutting around and greenstuffing to compensate, in the end it's not very clean work but it should look a little better with some paint on it.

Duke Sliscus conversion

Well, I couldn't just leave the Baron alone... He and Sliscus are great together, and the fluff on the Duke was just too good to pass up. Again, no model so I had to make a conversion. I actually made this one before the Baron, and it was my first time using greenstuff ever.

Parts used:

• Dark Elf Corsairs cloak, head, sheathed blade (that you can't really see, I blame my poor photographic skills), torso and 'S' banner pole. When I bought the Corsairs kit I thought I was being original, and I didn't even know about the 'S' banner thingie yet. Turns out there are plenty of other Duke Sliscus conversions around using the exact same ideas... Even similar poses. Oh well.
• Blast Pistol, Power Weapon (which will count as one of his Venom Blades) and back banner from the Kabalite Warriors kit.
• Filed down Space Marine Grenades are attached to his waist.

I also made him a trueborn bodyguard squad with the remaining corsairs cloaks, I'll post them later.

Baron Sathonyx conversion

I love Jump Infantery in 40k. So it was either Hellions or Scourges, and well, Hellions can be troops, have killer (not to mention available - still waiting for the new plastic Scourges) models.

I quickly decided that if I was to run Hellions, I might as well take the Baron. In the game, it's a pretty nice character, cheap and add lots of interesting bonuses. Only problem is, there isn't any model yet... so I made mine. My greenstuff skills are terrible, but I think the result looks pretty ok. Skyboard isn't glued yet, hence the yellow Sticky Tack.

Sorry for the picture quality, I need better lightning.

Conversion was pretty straightforward. I tried to stay as close as possible to the picture from the Codex as I couldn't find a better pose for him. The full conversion list:

• The skyboard was enlarged using 2 rudders from the Raider/Ravager kit ;
• Standard Hellion legs and body ;
• Standard arms, but repositioned a little using green stuff. There is a should pad on both sides to help hide my lousy sculpting skills ;
• The cloak is from the Warhammer Island of Blood starter set, with some more green stuff to attach it to the body and a couple of skulls from the Raider kit ;
• The head and hair are from the Warhammer Dark Elf Corsairs box. I initially had a standard corsair head but the hair wasn't flowing in the right direction and it made the mini look weird. So the hair was cut, repositioned, and some more greenstuff was added. I hope it'll look better once painted :-)

So it begins...

People told me I should have a Warhammer 40k blog. Document my madness. Here it is! I'll rant about how fragile Dark Eldar are, how awesome the (new) minis look, and occasionally post about what I've purchased/built/converted/painted. Maybe even post a couple lists and battle reports, who knows...