Asurmen mows the lawn.

First (almost) finished Eldar Dire Avenger. As usual, my crappy camera skills present the generic colour scheme for the army as a whole. There are a few parts I haven't done, like the camera/sensor thingy on the backpack (wtf is that exactly?!) and the stones need to be redone with greater detail, and the white needs tidying up, and the bone needs highlighting, and the blue needs improving, and...

I plan to build the entire army without helmets, Exarchs aside, and so I made use of some Wood Elf heads courtesy of Mr. Golding. I was hesitant initially, but decided that the half-masks really make stylish alternatives to helments*. With the hair colour, I juggled between blonde, brown and grey tones until I gave convention the proverbial poke in the nipple and went with radioactive anime green. 40k fanboys might seek my demise, but I want to explain my position. I feel that many hobbyists get overly concerned with being completely loyal to the fluff of whatever game system they happen to be playing, and this often turns budding creativity into obsessive canonism. I've never gotten on well with the dark, gothic, overly 'real' theme of the 40k universe and usually seek to break away from/bitch about this whenever I can**. So my girly Space Elves have anime hair.
Anyway. white takes forever to paint. This prototype taught me a lot about using white as a major colour:

• Study your miniature in great depth before you commit to painting it. By contrast to more paint-by-numbers models such as Space Marines, Eldar armour is functional and stylish*** - or in other words, it's psycho-reactive and is both clothing and armour simultaneously. Specifically, I found that the rear-knee 'trousers' flow into 'armour' as it approaches the ankle which wouldn't be too difficult to shade were it not for the fact that i'm painting white. White cannot be highlighted, but exaggerating the lowlights of the recesses worked for 'Eavy Metal Biel-Tan Guardians, so I went with that.
• Use a seperate water pot for white. Polluting your white-water mix isn't at all obvious until the paint dries on the model. Certain sections of the guy you see above used to be slightly pink.
• Paint white last. That way, you avoid having to repaint several layers to cover up any mistakes.

I also tried doing NMM (Non-Metal-Metal) gold on the handle trim of the catapult. I think it looks like 'metal' but also a lot like toffee cheesecake (there isn't a very clear picture of it above) and not at all like gold. Something I will need to research properly before I attempt it again...

I'll post more pictures as I produce them. I plan to finish another four Dire avengers, then a Wave Serpent, then probably do at least one Fire Dragon and a special Farseer conversion.

I'll also be posting a step by step guide on how to paint the above Spelf, complete with shaky camera pictures. Watch this Space!

*Us girly Elves just love to accessorise!

**If I ever do a Space Marine army, i'll do Ultramarines, except i'll call them UberMarines, call their Chapter Master Mr. T, and declare that the Games Workship fluff is incorrect and that my protrayal of the Emperor's finest is much better. And i'll be right.

***I should be on 'Changing Rooms'. Christ, I didn't realise painting Eldar would require a camp alter-ego.

First 500pt List

So, to my pleasant suprise I found my old post as a 'draft' - Blogger rocks! :D

My toys finally arrived!... and then I went to Download. Had the day off for recovery yesterday, so I got everything built. The dire avengers are still missing an arm and heads, but thats because I need to paint the torso's* before I attach the other arm, and green stuff the hair on the helmetless heads i'm using. Oh, and one of the Rangers' rifles was broken in the box, so that's gonna need some greenstuff-glueing!**

List:

HQ: Farseer (55) Doom (25) Singing Spear (3) = 83

Troops: 5 Rangers (95) = 95

Troops: 8 Dire Avengers (96) Exarch (12) Power-Weapon & Shimmershield (15) Bladestorm (15) = 138

Elites: 5 Fire Dragons (80) = 80

Dedicated Transport (For Dire Avengers): Wave Serpent, Twin Linked Shuriken Catapult, Energy Field (90) Twin-Linked Shuriken Cannon (10) = 100

Total: 500 Points
This is a list that I know will not win every game. It's implicity weak because it realies getting fragile units close to the enemy in order to do any damage (apart from the rangers) without any cc support. The mainstay squad is the Dire Avengers, who will be resaponsible for doing most of the damage. The idea is to use them in combination with the Farseer to fly close to the enemy, decimate them with a combination of Doom and Bladestorm, then escape in the Wave Serpent before the reach me (Unless the enemy have fleet, this is easily done with an 18" range). I took a power weapon + Shimmershield with the dire avengers so that they can deal with smaller/remainder units in cc if desired.

The Rangers are there to sit on an objective and, if they are lucky, pin down low-ld enemy squads that I don't want to deal with (Ork nobs for example).

The Fire dragons are cheap Anti-Tank choice that are also effective against elite infantry like nobs and marines.

Finally, the Farseer represents the leader of the expedition. Young, inexperienced, but full of determination and constantly thinking, she sees the future and utilises this knowledge to exploit her enemies' weaknesses.

*Tip #1: NEVER build a model without first considering how it will be painted! I once built a whole regiment of Grave Guard, then pondered exactly how I was going to paint the chestplates after I had attached the shields -_-

**Tip #2: Putting metal models together with superglue works ok, but can often prove brittle and break during transit. A good solution to this is to apply glue to either part, then put a tiny blob of green stuff on one surface before pushing the parts together - a bit like bricks and cement. The green stuff reacts with the superglue and turns hard as rock, but also tough enough to withstand minor shock.

The Flymo is impatient...

Received an email from Wayland Games saying my order was dispatched yesterday.

Yesterday was sunday 0_o

I head to Download on wednesday, so whether is turns up tonight or tomorrow wont make too much difference... I'll have built a prototype dire avenger at best.

*sigh*

The Garden is empty...

Contacted Wayland Games who said they were awaiting stock before they could send out my order for the first month. They said they should be able to send it before the end of the week which means I wont be painting until the start-middle of next week? Since i'm heading to Download Festival for 5 days on Wed 10th June, this eats half the month...