Thursday 19 June 2014

Eldar colour-scheme

Hi peps! Time for a quick update :) As mentioned in many previous posts I've been spending the last few months building my wraith themed Eldar army. Having finally finished almost all of it, I decided to buckle down and decide on a colour scheme to encourage myself to eventually start painting them...

As a starting point, I had 5x Eldar Wraithguards with Wraithcannons undercoated white. 

Initially I was considering going with some "ethereal" colours to represent the ghost theme of the army. Basically, I painted each model with thin washes and drybrushed white for the ghostly effect....

However, even though it's a nice effect I felt that an entire army painted like this wouldn't really pop! on the tabletop. So I went searching online for inspiration... One of the posts that caught my attention was this one from Dakka Dakka.
I was certain I didn't want any shade of blue as my marines are already blue. I didn't want yellow either as I don't like the Iyanden colours one bit.. As red is the colour of my Warhammer Fantasy Khorne-based Warriors of Chaos army, so I decided to give green a go :)

I painted the whole model Caliban Green and did a test of the remaining highlights on the top part of his armour. Furthermore, I decided on blue'ish gems as I really like the way they stick out! Finally, I wanted to break up the green so I decided to keep his head, shoulders and kneepads pure white. I was sold on this look!!! So I decided to crack on and paint the rest of the model :D 
I wanted the gun to have a wraithbone tone to it, and after reading various guides I decided to try an easy approach by simply washing the already white gun with Agrax Earthshade (brown wash) and drybrush with Screaming Skull... I really like this simple effect! :) His loincloth was painted bright green (Moot Green) and heavily washed with Biel-Tan Green (green wash) to get some shading...

Following the same method as his top bit, I first highlighted all his armour with a thick line of Warboss Green. Secondly, I wanted the gems on his gun to be different from the rest, and inspired by the Dakka post previously mentioned, I went for orange (Blazing Orange).

Second hightlight was done with a thin line of Moot Green, while the orange gems were highlighted with Citrus Orange (from Miniature Paints). To tie the green highlights together a bit and help with shading in the recesses, I gave most of the armour a wash with Biel-Tan Green.

For the final results the gems on his armour was painted Sotek Green and highlighted with Lothern Blue. All gems then got a layer of Gloss Varnish to make them shine.
 The base was done as I usually do with a few layers of drybrushing, some rocks, skulls and a bit of static grass. To represent the awesome power of his wraithcannon I painted the inside with Sotek Green and drybrushed with Lothern Blue and Skull White to get the right glow..
A few images of the final model below. Must say it's one of my personal favourites so far and I cant wait to paint the remaining 1000 points worth of Wraiths! :D Enjoy and hope you like it as much as me...




Sunday 1 June 2014

WIP Magnetized Eldar Wraith Knight

Continuing the expansion of my newest army from my giant box of goodness, the Eldar Ghostwarriors, I have finally (last but not least) come around to the mighty Wraith Knight!

All the sprues laid out... Whew, quite a big project! Below is a few pics taken during assembly:

All individual limps etc put together...

Torso with it's plethora of spikes and blades...

And finally all weapons, guns etc more or less built...

Now this was the easy part... :) As usual, in order to not waste any parts of a very expensive model, the Knight off course needed to be magnetized... After some serious research I ordered a bunch of 6 mm magnets to supplement what I already have.

However, while the poor Knight was still lying in pieces on my desk I went to play a friendly last-game-of-6'th-edition with a Space Marine + Eldar list. As I really wanted to try playing my new Eldar I had to find a replacement (see image below)... The size fits fairly well and the model is certainly a beast on the tabletop! Thanks Bob for god sportsmanship and letting me play the wooden Knight ;)

Now on to the magnetizing, which ended up taking me the better part of a weekend, requiring a lot of measuring and dry-fitting before getting out the Super Glue...

The major bits, being the torso (magnetized mainly for easy of transportation), shoulders and all weapon arms were fitted with the 6 mm magnets. I also padded the shoulder joints with some Green Stuff to reinforce them.

The head was fitted with 5 mm magnets to enable movement, while shoulder weapons were mounted using smaller 3 mm magnets...

Finally here is the big boy in two different configurations :D Now all there is left is to base him and paint him... Check back in half a year maybe :P


On a sidenote, having enjoyed playing the Eldar so much, I immediately ordered their Codex and a Wave Serpent... Both of which arrived yesterday :)

Now the Codex is already read and the Serpent put together in the matter of a day :D I magnetized the weapons-mount using two 6 mm magnets, simply to make transport easier. Apart from that it was a straight forward build... At last now my Wraithguard will be riding in style :D
Thanks for reading and stay tuned soon for an update on my Space Marine Centurions and the process of selecting an appropriate colour-scheme for my Eldar :)