Avengers

Today I put the finishing touches on my Dire Avenger squad. They were painted in their traditional paint scheme with the addition of green, purple and yellow touches to tie them in to the army's general colour scheme. The rune and ying-yang symbol are decals.

The Exarch

2nd Edition metal Avengers.

We were guardians once...some of the old metal guardian models that were drafted into the Dire Avengers.

I didn't take any in-progress pics unfortunately, so here's a quick run-down of the colours I used. Oh, I should point out that I am still using some old Citadel paints so some of the names might be a bit off.

BC - Base Coat, H - Highlight, W - Wash, S - Shading

Helmet

BC - Electric Blue

H1 - several thin coats of Skull White

S1 - thinned Space Wolf Grey

Armor

BC - Night World Blue

H1 - Ultra Marine or Moody Blue (I can't remember which)

H2 - Enchanted Blue

H3 - Electric Blue

Leather

BC - Graveyard Earth

H1 - Graveyard Earth + Vomit Brown

H2 - Kommando Khaki

Weapons

BC - Graveyard Earth

H1 - Graveyard Earth + Bleached Bone

H2 - Bleached Bone

Ribbons/Clasps

BC - Snakebite Leather

W - thinned Dark Flesh

H1 - Spearstaff Brown

H2 - Sunburst Yellow

H3 - Sunburst Yellow + Skull White

Comb

Green

BC - Dark Angel Green

H1 - DA Green + Imperial Strike Green

H2 - Imperial Strike Green + Shull White

Purple

BC - Liche Purple
H1/H2 - Liche Purple + Shull White (add more white for H2)

GB

Quick Dreadnought Base

I see a lot of cool bases on people's miniatures so I thought I'd give it a go. For my first attempt I am using the dreadnought base from the Black Reach set. I want to keep it pretty basic - just a simple textured base. The materials and tools are:

• plastic card
• sand (from Dollerama)
• xacto knife
• model glue
• white glue
• skull accessory (from Black Reach)
• scissors
• circle template (optional)
• scibing tool (optional)

Using the template, I found the appropriate size and drew this on my plastic card sheet. The template is handy but you could also trace around the base to draw a circle. I then cut the circle out using a pair of scissors. I wasn't too concerned about cutting a perfect circle. In fact I cut a bit inside the line to make the card slightly smaller than the base. Using the base from the Eldar war walker as reference I made rough, irregular cuts around the outer edge of the card.

Using the scribing tool (the back of an old #11 blade work well too) I gauged various cracks and fissures across the surface until I was happy with the look. To give the base a more 3-D effect I removed one large and several smaller sections and repositioned them so that they overlapped at the edges. I made sure to add nicks and cracks to these smaller pieces as well. Once I was happy with the arrangement I glued the card to the base with model glue. I added some debris using bits of left over plastic and some fine sand tacked down with white glue. I also added a skull from the Black Reach set and disguised the join with sand.

Once the glue had set I sprayed the whole thing with black primer. Painting consisted of a couple of thin coats of Codex Grey, followed by Kommando Khaki and highlighted with a mix of Kommando Khaki and Skull White. Where the original base is visible was painted Scorched Earth and highlighted with Graveyard Earth and Kommando Khaki. The skull was Scorched Earth, Graveyard Earth, Bleach Bone and Skull White.

Not including drying time, I must have spent less than an hour putting this together. Quick, easy and cheap.

GB

Il-Kaithe Family Portrait

I thought it might be fun to show what I have in my collection for my Eldar host. Most of it is painted but every unit needs some TLC. You can see the old craftworld rune and red hands that have to go. The bikes are in need of most repair - every rider has parts missing and almost all of the bikes have some damage. The hood of the vyper is actually detached. There is a second vyper which is not in this picture that is missing it's hood altogether. Also not pictured is an unassembled war walker.

There are some old models in this picture. Some of the harlequins are among the oldest in my collection. You can also see some early plastic guardians with lasguns - remember when Eldar used to be able to take lasguns?

My current projects are to finish the guardian squad on the right and then work on the rangers. In between that I am also working on a conversion of Eldrad to represent my Grand Farseer.

GB

First Blood

So, one of the reasons that I got back into this hobby is my son. He's at an age now where he realizes that my miniatures are not mere toy soldiers but are rather part of a larger hobby/game. He really became interested in the miniatures game after playing the Dawn of War video game. We bought the Black Reach set and I showed him how to paint the miniatures. While he was busy painting I read the rules which have changed quite a bit from the 2nd edition. After teaching him the basic concepts and mechanics we went to the local gaming club and he played his first game small game with the contents of the Black Reach set. He was hooked and began researching the different armies until he settled on the Tau, primarily because he liked the look.

This past weekend we once more set off to the local gaming club. This time out it would be father vs son with 600 points each of Tau (using proxies) and Eldar. To say he obliterated me would be an understatement. He wiped the floor with me! I laughed at the end of the game when he tells me, "You could have done better if your deployment was better." Some of the other highlights of the game were his Fire Warriors destroying my Guardians in his first turn of shooting - 12 shots, 8 kills - and his Kroot surviving bladestorm thanks to their +1 cover save - 16 hits, 2 kills. The point of the exercise was to learn the rules and become familiar with the army codices but we had great fun.

The end of turn 1 and I'm in a world of hurt. The guardians in the centre are all but gone, only the banshee Exarch survived a dash for the ruin and the avengers are facing a dozen Kroot in the woods.

The avengers made a good showing in the first round of HtH but are slowly but surely whittled down by the Kroot (as played by Ork Boyz).

The crew of a Devilfish (played by a Falcon) get a ring-side seat as the Farseer squares off against the Tau Shas'o.

GB

War Host of Il-Kaithe

My camera has been on the fritz which explains the lack of updates. That and my general tardiness anyway. I have been busy assembling or should I say re-assembling my Eldar army.

I started playing WHFB and WH40K a long time ago but for a long time had put it aside for other priorities. I have recently come back to the hobby and have been sifting through my collection to bring my 40K Eldar up to 5th Edition standard. I have also been repainting some of my figures to create a more cohesive look.

My original colour concept was based on the Joker from Batman. All the figures were to have red hands in honour of Khaine the Bloody Handed war god of the Eldar. The red hand was also to be the rune symbol for the army. Well I no longer like the red hands or the rune but I still like the green/purple combo. As it turns out, during my abscence from the hobby GW introduced a few other craftworlds, one of which (Il-Kaithe) just happens to have a similar colour scheme to mine. Therefore I decided to adopt Il-Kaithe as the craftworld for my warhost.

Here are some WIP images of my core Troops units:

Dire Avengers:

The Avengers were pretty straight forward - needing some freshening up on the paint job. However, when I last played Aspect squads were limited to 5 + Exarch so I needed to pad my numbers to 10. Luckily I had a number of old metal guardians that could easily be painted as DAs.

Guardians:

Most of these Guardians are from one of GW's earliest plastic sets which came as a complete figure with metal shurikan catapult. In order to mix up the static pose I cut and moved or replaced some heads.

Warlock:

More work needs to be done on the Warlock to bring out details and the witchblade. I'm also looking forward to adding runes to the Warlock's frock.

Rangers:

With the Rangers I am trying to keep the same colour scheme but with subdued tones. The long coats for example are a mix of Graveyard Earth and Liche Purple.

GB