A Creeping log

I have a confession to make.

I've been collecting the new style Dark Eldar since they came out, but in the last six years I've only done two boxes of Kabalites. And some of them ended up as Trueborn.

Sure, I've got plenty of the OG warriors. But now that the rest of the Kabal is looking good, they just... aren't quite doing it for me.

Time to do more Kabalites.

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This time around, I've decided that I want to give these guys a little bit of extra zing. I want to give them a bit more of a 'special forces' kind of look.

I've got two ideas to start off with. One, using the masked heads, to get a look somewhere between a spec ops soldier with balaclava and a ninja. And when I run out of those heads, I can probably mimic the effect with some green stuff. Two, a scope for their splinter rifles. I mean all of the cool spec ops guys have scopes, right?

I quite like the look of the scope that is attached to the blaster and dark lance. But there's no way I'm trying to get hold of one darklight weapon per warrior. So I decided to make one and print it.

To Blender!



I was pretty happy with the design, so I got it printed with Shapeways. Problem solved!

So, with two basic ideas and some subtle pose changes, I tried to put together special forces Kabalite dude:



I think it's coming along ok so far, though I might have to take the hook off the back of the rifle - I think it would gouge the user in the back of the head if he tried to use the scope, which is bad.

I'm planning a couple of squads of dudes like this - any suggestions are welcome

Really like it. Great pose, and the design for the scope is suitable sleek. Agree about the hook, it would def be slightly uncomfortable to use the scope with that in the back of your head. My only suggestion is perhaps remove the ridges on the Gun in front of the scope, so only the sight is remaining. Would make it more sleek, and would fit in better with the scope

Great idea! I love the masked heads. I don't use them personally (at least not yet) as my Archon insists her minions wear their helms in battle but they're probably my favourite heads on the sprues. the scopes will look great across the entire squad.

One suggestion I have is to give your guys a sort of camo feel. Google urban camo patterns, there are some that are a mix of black and grey shades, all really dark. They look amazing. You could create a semi-camo look by throwing a couple shades of dark grey over a black base. Call it shadow armour or something, claim it helps them hide in dark places ready to ambush their victims.

Another thing you could do is sculpt some cloaks for them, like the Eldar Rangers (though with better looking armour).

Thanks for the suggestions!

@spellcheck2001, great idea. Cutting off the ridges makes the gun much sleeker, and it's not like they'll need iron sights with a scope in place. I trimmed the final sight to about half size - it looked funny obscuring the scope, but needed to be there to balance the curves underneath the barrel, I felt.

@Demantiae not sure that I want to rejig my colour scheme, although being mainly grey already is a good start I suppose. And since I use cloaks to differentiate my Trueborn from Kabalites, I'm not going to give them to everyone... but I was stuck on how to make my Sybarite stand out, and the cloak will solve that problem nicely! Back-banners and trophy poles don't really scream spec ops, after all...

With that, I put together a Sybarite with a rifle (she'll have haywire grenades). You can tell she's a sybarite because of the cloak, which I might paint in an urban camo pattern, and because she is pointing. Leadership = pointing, right? I also threw in the first guy, with trimmed rifle.



I didn't have a masked female head that I liked, so I green-stuffed a mask onto a spare Venom-rider head.



Lessons learned:
- put some creases in the green stuff cloak before adding to the model

Otherwise, pretty happy with how they look so far.

10 days to do one extra model... it ain't called a Creeping log for nothing... sigh

According to the fluff the warriors hang their armor on with hooks in their flesh so an extra one poking him in the scalp would probably just be a bonus. That said, it looks better with it off.
Great posing on these two. The forward leaning guy looks really intense.
Looking forward to seeing them painted.