The Fleshwrought Coven and Kabal of the Cleaved Soul

Greetings ya nasty little Space Elves. I've been lurking here for quite a while and have finally decided to share my own brand of twistedness with you good people. I've been posting this army on Warseer for the last two years so some of you will have seen it already (I recognise a few names here already) but I feel an entirely Eldar based community would help give me more feedback and also gives me more of an excuse to rummage through the plogs here and drool.

The idea for the army originally was very simple: All Coven, All the way! I loved the artwork in the codex and the new direction the DEldar had taken as a whole with the new edition (about 10 years too late in my opinion). I've always loved the gribblier side of 40k and will compulsively convert anything I can get my hands on. The Coven was the perfect thing. With great imagery and, at that time, no actual models out yet I was free to create everything from scratch. I won't go into all the WIP pics for anything that has since been finished but here is where the Coven is currently.

Firstly my Coven Master and a few of his flesh-crafting cronies:







Next the first Wrack squad:



Some of their big brothers, the Grotesques:


And the engines. 2x Taloses (Taloi?) and 2x Cronoses:





There's a unit of Scourges as well:


A raider:




And my pain tokens:

The dice sit in the cavity and the amount of pain is shown on the top, easy and effective.

That's as far as I got on the Coven elements before being distracted by various thing like Real Life, Diablo 3, a commission Space Wolves army and generally a bad case of the CBFs. I had made up some Kabal elements to go with the coven to give it some much-needed range but I was very torn on how to paint them and really how to fit them with my theme. Eventually, a month or so ago, I decided to do them as a Kabal that raids Craftworlds and has taken to using the weapons and wargear of their hoity-toity star-faring cousins. In other words, do a Dark Eldar Kabal using the Craftworld Codex. This has got my hobby juices flowing again and so I have been working on these.

Farseer and Warlocks:






Dark Avatar:





And the beginnings of a Guardian/Avengers unit:



So that's where I am at the moment. Hope the massive photo-dump doesn't overload people. If you want a more in-depth plog of the history-to-date of the army have a hunt for me on Warseer, same handle, same thread-name.

In conclusion I say hello again, C&C welcome and more to come soon...

Very cool carni o flesh, some ideas I considered myself (eg. corpse cart dude on raider, I've got the model and used the corpse on a stick for a grisly trophy)

My favourite is actually your Scourge WIP, they look very intimidating indeed!

Cheers

Chris

Yes awesome,
I really enjoyed seeing all your work over at Warseer glad you came over here!

Excellent work, keep showing more!

There's a whole lot of awesome going on here Really liking the haemonculi conversions(love the classic Haemi head, use of a Daemonette torso) Looking forward to more!

Yes! Glad you made it over here. Was it my invitation that convinced you to join? I hope so!

If said so at Warseer and I'll say so again: your army is incredible. As you can see in my sorry excuse of an army log, I've taken much inspiration from you and have a feeling that I'll continue doing so.

Welcome in the Dark City. Watch your back and enjoy your stay.

Thanks for the war welcome all and the great feed back. I have the first proper update for the army on this forum with something I cobbled together earlier tonight. A Dark Eldar Warp Spider:






Really really please with how this came out. I've used bitz from Kabalite Warriors, Mandrakes, Dryad and Conoptek Wraiths. Hopefully the mandibles are visible on the mask to help show him off as an 'aspect warrior' rather than a grunt with more gear. The Deathspinner is made from the body of a Splinter cannon and the barrel off a Shredder. Pretty much he's armed with a Heavy Shredder. I have to buy some more mandrakes for legs before I can make any more but I really had to get this idea down on paper as it were before I forgot.

Let me know what you all think. Next it'll either be back to painting Guardians or (if the bitz turn up soon) a start on my take on Wraithguard. TTFN

Cool Warpspider!

Welcome to the Dark City! I've been following your work on Warseer and I'm really impressed. Great stuff. I really like the Cronos conversion. They look suitably different from the talos yet similar.

Cheers Devilish.

Small update from this weekend. Got the first half of the Guardian squad completed:





Not my best painting but I'm just happy that I'm getting them finished as opposed to letting them moulder in a figure case never to be finished. The other half of the unit to be finished soon. Hopefully...

Quote :

first off that's a very interesting take on a warp spider, very nice. second, that Dark Avatar is absolutely the MAN.

and now i have two questions, 1) where did you get the lower torso for the guy in the above pic, and 2) where did you get that saber tooth skull?

The torso looks as though it is from a Daemonette.
The Dark Eldar Warp Spider is BOSS

Wow, your models look absolutely hellish! The Taloi and Cronoi conversions, along with pretty much everything else are very original and incredibly pulled off. These models really give away a very creepy, horrific, downright nightmarish aura - in the best sense of the words! The twisted versions of the Craftworld units are also really well done!

Cheers for the kind words all. Really happy that these armies are getting appreciated here in Commoragh.

SebastionSynn: The torso for the Haemi is indeed from a Daemonette (as Evil Space Elves says) I used the same on the painted female Haemi as well. The mask is one of the options that comes with the VC Cairn Wraith. I saw that mask and knew it had to go on a Haemi in this army. I plan to use it again for the Spiritseer that leads my Wraithguard unit when I get around to making them.

Hope that helps and if you, or anyone, wants a run-down of any other bitz used in the army just let me know.

Thanks all. More soon

My apologies, i said torso when i meant the robed legs. but thanks for letting me know about the rest of it as well, will need to look then up in some bitz stores.

That's cool Synn. The legs are from the Lhamaean model. The model works really well for a torso swap as there is a belt/mid-riff type thing that separates the two halves of the model really distinctly. All you have to do is cut on the dotted line as it were. The fact that its in finecast only makes it easier to do this kind of conversion (a fact I am eternally grateful for with the Mandrakes).

And on that note. I decided to give myself a reward for getting the Guardians painted and allowed myself to convert something:






I give you the Exrach for my Warp Spiders. I made the call to cannibalise the legs from 5 of my Scourges to finish off the Warp Spider unit. I'll be finishing off the Spiders long before I get back to painting the Scourges so when the time comes I'll buy another box of Mandrakes to resurrect the poor flying torsos I have in my bitz box.

I've gone for a larger warp-pack on the Exarch for a few reasons. One is to allow more room for the Spinneret Rifle arms. They are taking the place of the second set of veins. Which leads me to the second reason for a larger pack. I figured the power needed to run both the warp-pack and the rifles would be greater than that of just the pack, hence bigger pack = more power.

The Spinneret Rifle arms where a bit of a fuss as they really get in the way of the combat arms. I had to brake them off and re-pose them several times to get it right. I was going to do the full wrist-mounted power blades but frankly the parts I had weren't gonna work for it and I now like the idea of two Power Daggers instead. Also as we all know, knives is something you are NEVER short of in the DE kits.

Would really like some feed back on this guy to see what you all think about the posing and such.

Cheers in advance. PHM

looks really nice but the right arm needs to be repositioned so that the blade is pointing upwards or slightly back from the main body. reasoning is that his pose has him looking as if he's about to enter hand to hand with an enemy, and in florentine fighting one hand blocks while the other strikes. right now it looks as if he's about to block with the left hand but the right hand is kinda off kilter for a good strike at the enemy. however, that's just my opinion, it's your model, and you can do and imagine as you wish.

now on to the REALLY important thing------where are the other pics for the rest of the warp spider unit?

The dark Warp Spider Exarch looks really good! The head is fantastic - where does the bit come from? My only gripe here would be the Exarch simply wielding two knives rather than having two wrist blades, but that's just my inner Warp Spider lover talking - can't have them in any other way! Great job, you really go great lengths to kitbash your stuff!

Thanks for the kind words guys.

SebastionSynn: Cool advise about the duelling stance. I'll have a go at repositioning the arms to work better. As for pics of the rest of the unit, well, I have to build them first, hehe. Half way through a third Spider but after him I'm going to have to scavenge some more bitz to finish the unit. Need 3 Shredders and 3 Splinter Cannons to make the rest of the Death Spinners. That's the issue with using so many bitz from across the GW range, when you run out its a pain to track down any more with-out buying a whole box.

Siticus the Ancient: The heads for the Spiders (and the rest of the Evil Eldar) are made by chopping the 'horns' off Wood Elf Dryad heads and hollowing out the backs. Then I chop the faces off various Kabalite and Wych heads and cut and file till it fits like a mask. Any gaps then get filled with green stuff. The Warlocks use Daemonette heads instead of Dark Eldar ones as I wanted them to have hair. For the Warp Spiders I have added mandibles to emphasise the spider look and to distance them even more from the rank-and-file. I know what you mean about the Powerblades over the daggers. I'll have another dig in the bitz box (I think there's some more bitz from the Conoptek Wraiths that's may fit the bill) and see what I come up with.

The third Spider and maybe a slight revamp of the Exrach to follow soon

Please do not swear or try to get around the swear filter. Cheers - Cavash.

Hey hey,

Just a small update. Work on the Guardians continues at a slow pace but just wanted to show the progress:



The main blocks of colour are done, now just the details in gold, purple and green left then the first troop squad is finished. I've got half the bitz I need to do the Wraithguard and am just waiting on another bitz order and the kindness of friends to supply the rest. I should get started on them in the next week.

I LIKE that skin banner, that's so cool, it's Kewl. where'd you get it,. i've never seen it before.

Thanks SebastionSynn. The banner is from the old Dogs of War regiment Mengil's Manflayers. Could'nt tell you how I actually came by it now but it was sitting in the bitz box for a long time before this army was started. That's certainly a perk to compulsively hoarding bitz and buying whole boxes for just a few parts.

Major awesomeness!!!

Power Hungry Monkey wrote:

Thanks SebastionSynn. The banner is from the old Dogs of War regiment Mengil's Manflayers. Could'nt tell you how I actually came by it now but it was sitting in the bitz box for a long time before this army was started. That's certainly a perk to compulsively hoarding bitz and buying whole boxes for just a few parts.

well shoot, that means my chances of getting my hands on one are next to nill. that would make an excellent trophy pole on a raider or a venom. guess i'll have to talk to a friend of mine and get him to green stuff one up for me.

Yeah sorry Synn. I've got 2 of the great-weapons from the Manflayers still but they are way too fat to go on the Dark Eldar models. Maybe if I get back to Marines sometime in the future I can use them there.

So the Guardians are done and now you can all oogle at your leisure. Here's a few shots of the army as it stands:





The obligatory basic-troops-squad is done and dusted (besides the platform gun, someday) so I can get back to the fun stuff. This year, coming to a blog near you, more Warp Spiders, Wraithguard, Rangers, War Walkers, Wraithlord and Rangers!

Stay tuned!

Power Hungry Monkey wrote:

Yeah sorry Synn. I've got 2 of the great-weapons from the Manflayers still but they are way too fat to go on the Dark Eldar models. Maybe if I get back to Marines sometime in the future I can use them there.

found two sets of the manflayers for sell on ebay, sadly can't spend any money right now to get them, guess i'll just have to keep trying, on the plus side, thanks to the new high elf plastics that just came out, i no longer need to try and find those rare metal handmaidens. can't remember what i was gonna convert them into now though, probly crusader sisters, at any rate, i still love that dark avatar, that thing is just too kewl for words.

The Avatar is kinda worrying me now, just because of the size of it. I've been sifting through a bunch of rumour pages (mainly on Warseer, they're pretty good normally) and a lot of the stuff, including some pics of concept models from GD, are pointing to the Avatar being reduced in scale. This would certainly throw my guy, and anyone who has the FW Avatar, way out of the right size compared to its ability to take and dish-out damage.

Hopefully this is a filthy, filthy lie and the Avatar will be re-envisioned as the immense demi-god it really should be. Plus I doubt GW would shoot themselves in the foot like that. Who knows, Avatars may be able to taken as a 'normal' and 'exalted' option in the new dex