Corsair building: the Envenomed Lotus

Hey ladies and gents. I thought I'd start my project log as I put together and based my first box of Dark Eldar today, and wanted to share my thoughts on the theme of the army I'm building, its overall force, and of course, how I'm going to paint it.
Theme: Pirates! Why? Why not? Pirates with a lot of poisoned weapons, extra strong poison (thanks to my Duke Sliscus counts as that I haven't named), and very, very raider and venom heavy.
So, the army is also the first shooty army I've made. Which is funny considering just how great the DE can be at assault- I decided to go against my long time play style and go shooty for the first time. I am very excited about this and can't wait for everything to get here and for my first game with them.

Here's a link to my army build for a tournament at Warzone Matrix in September. https://thedarkcity.forummotion.com/t1015-1850-newb-tourney-list-thanks-for-all-the-help-its-almost-ready

Here's what I've ordered/have:

Slicus stand in (unnamed.)
40 kabalite warriors
20 trueborn models (8 blaster born, 2 dracons, 10 anti infantry trueborn with carbines, splinter cannons, and shredders)
20 wyches
6 raiders
2 venoms
3 ravagers
1 razorwing
10 scourges (most of the carbines have been appropriated for the AI trueborn, and this group is heavy mobile fire support)
6 reavers.

Future: At LEAST one more razorwing, 6 more reavers, Lelith, some Incubi, and a Harlequin squad w/ death jester.

For now though, the theme is heavily based on mobile firepower. I mean, I've got 30 lance weapons at 1850 points. Thats craziness. I love that I'm going to have to borrow dice from a buddy of mine to play this army's shooting phase. I don't really plan on using the wyches in september as I've always been of the thought that a singular assault squad should have an HQ or some other IC attached, but I'd rather focus on firepower.

Paint Scheme: I don't know yet. I want something that says, "We come from the void and take your stuff, your life, YOUR SOUL, and we're very good at it!"
Initial thoughts: Vibrant, almost violent red - washes over scab red and black, with perhaps gold and platinum trim. I'm going for flashy AND gory.
I would love input into this. My last armies were sort of Flesh Tearer based BA and of course the elegant simplicity and beauty of off white and black of the black templars, so I'd like to do something different in my painting to compliment the difference in play style.

Pirates! I approve.

Red. Different. Gotcha.

I did a Chaos Marine Lord a few years back.

I based it on Scab Red and shaded it with Blue. It made the red darker and cooler. I rather liked the results.

I added yellow to the base color to highlight and it turned out pretty nice.




If the highlight comes out to bright, give it a glaze using thinned Baal red.

I would apply a black body suit and highlight those with blue instead of grey. The whole model will have a cool darker bloody feel instead of bright red, like in Blood Angels.

I would avoid using bright metallics, go for a boltgun mixed with some blue or washed with Asurmen Blue and badab black to get the shine down.

My thoughts anyway. Looking forward to seeing your progress.

That's awesome Gar. I like the blue tint. I might try that on a test model.
Update: First Venom assembled! I used the crew to make some dynamic kabalite warriors, and added the chain hook bits to my Sliscus counts as to make a sort of sadistic cape. Photos soon. Though I don't have any chaos black primer or scab red curently so I've got to get back to a store tomorrow and get some before I can even attempt to paint anything. I'm essentially foregoing painting them up for now because I am going to be building such a large force for play on September 10th, so I can't really hope to build them all and even put the first few touches of paint to all of them.

That is an awful amount of lance weapons. Truly violent. I vote go for the red it'll look great.

Hadriel Caine wrote:

That is an awful amount of lance weapons. Truly violent. I vote go for the red it'll look great.

violence is what I'm good at.

The paint scheme that you seem to be thinking of doing is roughly the same as the one I have been using. I am use Scab Red on the armor and leaving the cloth black. Then, I wash the armor in Badab Black to give an interesting sheen. Next, I highlight it with Blazing Orange. The orange pops out alot which is what I was kind of going for. I don't know how "Look at me" you want yours. Anyways I hoped that helped alittle.

Do you have a log or any pics on how they turned out?

Order not here yet, but I've picked up my troops from one of my FLGS. This is going to be fun. I can't wait to create my murderous space elf pirate fleet!

On a personal note, I am very happy to say that my shoulder is finally healing from a sprained rotator cuff sustained about 6 months ago while I was giving a demonstration on Filipino/Malay martial arts. (Stupid me I continued the demonstration for 20 minutes after the injury occured, throwing around a 180 pound friend of mine.) This means I can go back to training full time, and I'm very excited about it! Yes this means less time to paint and game, but while I do love this hobby, my passion and my goals lie within teaching martial arts. I am about three years from this goal, I think.
Go me!

Ok,
Assembled:
1 raider (AWESOME)
1 venom
3 kabalite warriors squads- x2 blaster/Darklance 1 shredder spc
1 x4 man blasterborn squad

The rest should get here on tuesday!

DanceofDecemberSouls wrote:

Do you have a log or any pics on how they turned out?

Not yet, I plan on mabye putting up a log in the not too distant future but I can't promise anything;)

Anyways can't wait to see some pics!

Pictures forthcoming.
I just received the bulk of the models today, and I have a lot to put together. right now I have 3 of 4 raider based warrior squads done, one raider, one venom, and all of my trueborn squads put together, and a decent Sliscus standby. I'm going to tackle a ravager tonight before I pass out. Wish me luck. 11 days until the tourney!

First Ravager complete. 2 more Ravagers, 2 venoms, 3 more raiders left to go!

Pictures or it didn't happen!

The beginning of my beautiful parking lot of death.

I LOVE IT!!!

A1 makes everything better!

Oh yes it does. Did you like the baby formula as a backdrop? I've used it as terrain.

A very geeky proud papa moment:


His first box of Ork boys.

Nice. I just bought my daughter a chaos vindicator. My girl likes the ruinous powers, LOL.

I share your joy, or pain token. LOL

Yeah he likes chaos and orks. He's asking me for an Orc Stompa now. Like I can afford that! Its ok for him though- for a four year old everything's free.

He really impressed the guys that taught me how to play because he knew what everything was. He was pointing out all the stuff in their display case and saying, "look daddy, a dreadnought! Is that a space marine robot monster?"
Chokes me up just thinking about it.