Kabal of the Bitter Harvest

I started my Dark Eldar army about a year ago.  I've been meaning to do a project log somewhere for a long time, so I thought I'd start with samples of what I've completed so far.  These are roughly in the order that I painted them.

I decided I wanted something a little brighter than the GW scheme, and ended up with Reaper's Phoenix Orange as an edge highlight on black.  My other army is Ultramarines, and I wanted them to be able to kind of match, so Reaper's Ultramarine Blue triad is the main accent color.

Wyches

These wyches are the first Dark Eldar I've painted.  I've got two more squads of 10 (from battleforces) still on sprue, waiting for some love.

Raider

I've got four raiders painted up at this point.  I recently did the crew for all the vehicles, which meant I couldn't put a model from the squad to indicate what's inside anymore.  I had already magnetized the sails to make it easier to transport and store the models, so I decided to use the sail itself as a squad indicator.

I've got a set of sails with just white on them, for when the vehicle is empty.  For each squad, I painted the bevel on the base, and printed a custom decal in a matching color.  I also made a sigil in Inkscape for each squad type.  The one shown looks kind of like a "K", for Kabalite Warrior.  I'm using the flags-on-a-post that come with each Raider kit for Venoms.

Succubus


This is the first HQ I did for the Dark Eldar.  It looks okay enough at a tabletop distance, but up close like this I'm not so impressed.

Warriors


I've got two 10-man squads of these guys.  I've got plans (and decals made) to have these guys split up by adding a white ring on the bases, but haven't actually done it yet.  All my warrior arms are magnetized, so I can swap weapons between them, the trueborn, the archon, and maybe others later.  Even though it's kind of silly to have all the splinter rifles on magnets, it means I don't need to find the one to swap for the blaster.

Reavers


Reavers are what drew me to the Dark Eldar, particularly Mushkilla's battle reports.  I run 2x9 with blasters in most games.  The upgrades on Reavers are all on the underside, which makes it a pain.  The models with gold helmets have magnets on the back for the bladevane upgrades.  The models with the single pointed nose have the gun magnetized, for blasters or heat lances.  The arena champion is easier to tell, but I didn't glue in the tail, and put a magnet in the arm, so I can make it a regular reaver, or change the weapon.  I even made a third (potential) arena champion, so I can run them as 3x6 with the champion if I want.

Ravagers
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Everybody loves Ravagers.

Venom
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I've only got one Venom at the moment.

Archon (Strategos Thanotax)"]


I'm not too happy with how the flesh tabard thing turned on this guy, but otherwise I'm pretty happy.  The arms are on magnets so I can adjust to whatever I need.  I'm currently in a series of campaign games, so this is my main HQ for a while.

Incubi


I use Drazhar as my klaivex.  I'm really happy with how the heads turned out.  I wish I could remember what wash I used.

Trueborn




I'm doing two things to distinguish Trueborn from regular Warriors.  First, Trueborn get bare heads, while Warriors get helmets.  Second, I'm saving all the slotted backs with trophy racks and banners and such for Trueborn.  I think it makes them look pretty distinctive.

I haven't played a game with these guys since doing the whole vehicle contents thing, so they don't have a bevel color yet.  The flags on the back will also have matching decals.

Farseer


Since the new Eldar codex came out, I've started a small Craftworld allies force.  I decided to use kind of an inverse scheme as the Dark Eldar.  I'm using the Reaper triad from my DE edge highlight as the base color, and white for the weapons.  Ultramarines blue remains the main accent color, so it'll still match the marines.

This Farseer uses the legs from the fantasy High Elf Lord on Dragon, the torso, head, and arms from the new Farseer plastic kit, plus the jetbike.  I'm pretty happy with it, although I should have done the flowing robes in a different color, or maybe the bike.  The rider blends into the bike a bit more than I'd like.

Windrider Jetbikes


I love me some jetbikes, and these guys even score.  I did the guardian and shuriken cannon conversions as described by IDICBeer.

War Walkers


This is a fairly standard squadron of three War Walkers.  I magnetized the weapons, plus picked up some spares from Ebay, so it's a pretty flexible unit.  I carefully masked the canopies, but when airbrushing them some mist got on the back side, so they look kind of.. cloudy almost.  I think I might like the look of the models better without the canopies, anyways.

Crimson Hunter


I didn't really like the look of the canard/antenna things right behind the canopy on the Crimson Hunter, so I used the piece for the wraithfighter instead.  That has some sigil thing molded on it that seemed a bit wraith-y, so I turned it into a generic gem by carefully shaving it off with an #11 and then sanded it smooth.  I'm pretty happy, although my 3-tone gem technique doesn't entirely work on gems that big.  I originally did this piece (along with the rest of the craftworld stuff) on a tight schedule for an event in the summer, so I didn't have time to do edge highlights.  I'm not sure if I'm ever going to get to it.

Reactive Shield Generator


In the last campaign game I played in a couple weeks ago, I won a shield generator (5+ invul vs shooting for a unit) for use in future games.  The only catch is that you need to model something for it.  It's supposed to be a relic that the adeptus mechanicus dug up, and we captured.  I figured something necrony would fit, with an outside power source.  The main shaft and done are from an annihilation barge, and the petals and arms are the shields from lychguard.  The power source is some random bit, with spikey side blades from the reaver kit to make it feel a bit more dark eldar.  The cables are made with Green Stuff Industries' tentacle maker.  I bought the full set of tentacle markers on a whim at the Bay Area Open this year, but this was the first time I used it.  I damaged the pattern a bit when installing the still-flexible cable, but I don't think it shows too much.  Tweezers are definitely the wrong tool.

Thanks for reading this far!  Up next is a unit of guardians, a wave serpent, and a 5-man rangers squad (all primed).  After that, I've got a box of scourges, a box of warriors, and a razorwing all still on sprue.  I'd like another venom or two, but I've got way too much queued up as it is — I've also got some marines stuff, and monsters from Descent waiting for me.

Welcome to the Dark City, Groke! This is a might display you have there, very good colour scheme that definitely looks spectacular on the battlefield! The way to tell which squad sits in which Raider with interchangeable sails - that's definitely something original.

I love the banners to draw distinction to the Trueborn - I do the same, but for all Kabalite squads - unfortunately one of my oldest Sybarites has his banner snap off.

Am I right in guessing that Succubus had some grave troubles with Finecast? It is notorious for ruining the otherwise pretty Dark Eldar faces and your unfortunate Succubus seems to have caught a bad nose-job!

I'd love to see more from you, and perhaps a big group picture as well!

Thanks!

I'd love to blade the succubus on finecast.. but I think it was mostly just that I rushed it. The skin all is done as white, purple wash, then drybrush over it white. The face of an HQ model deserves more attention than that.

But I tend to move on the new models more than come back and improve older ones. There's always more that I want to do than I really have time for, and you have to let go eventually.

The finale for the campaign I've been playing is coming up next weekend.  The organizers have described it as "Apocalypse Lite" — 2000-4000 points, double force org, plus a single superheavy/lord of war allowed.  The Eldar and Dark Eldar in particular were encourages to bring superheavies.

I had been considering dipping my toe into the whole Forgeworld thing for a while, and decided to go full blast and get a Revenant Titan.  I placed my order shortly before Thanksgiving (before Escalation dropped, honest), and have been working hard to finish it since.

Spread out, it's big!


Some of the big pieces (like the giant pulsars) were pretty bent.  Fortunately, a little boiling water straightened them out pretty good.




Unfortunately, I neglected to get any WIP shots.  For painting, I had the legs and torso assembled as separate pieces.  I also kept the various white armor plates separate.  The gun barrels are magnetized, to ease transport.  Maybe I'll scratch-build some sonic lances sometime.

When I did final assembly, I found that I hadn't made the legs strong enough to support the weight of the torso.  After much swearing, and failed attempts at epoxying the stupid thing, I ended up adding an acrylic rod for support.  I had gone with the fairly static pose to try to avoid such a support, but such is life.





The detailed cockpit is pretty cool.  I didn't like how the hinge worked, though, so I cut it off and put in some magnets.



The base is a wooden plaque I bought from a craft store for a couple bucks.  I decided that my titan had just blown up a necron Tesseract Vault, then jumped on top of it to pick the next target.  I ordered a couple bits off Ebay, but the C'tan by itself is over $50.  I determined that there's a HeroClix Dr Manhattan that's about the same size that can be had for less than $10.

The Necron codex implies that the C'tan body is metal, but then infused with the energy of the C'tan.  So I decided that a dead one would be just metal again.  I tried to reshape it with some hot water, but it didn't work too well.  So I chopped off the pointing hand and put in some tentacles.



After I finished the titan, I had a bit of time to paint up some eldar rangers.  I'm not quite sure how well these guys will fit into my army, but they were kind of fun to paint.  I'm still not a fan of finecast, though.

-claps- as for the incubi wash, looks like drakenhof nightshade

More craftworld allies for my kabal.


10 Guardians with a (magnetized) heavy weapon platform


Plus their Wave Serpent ride. Underslung shurken catapult/cannon is magnetized (needed the cut the sucker in half to put the magnet in, then glue it back together), as are the turret weapons.

Next up for DE/E is a Razorwing jetfighter, a Forgeworld Reaper, and a squad of Scourges. It'll probably be a while, since I'm distracted by another project.

Very nice! Good work magnetising the weapons too. I thought about it but decided I couldn't be bothered. The Scatter Laser is just too useful to ever want anything else on the turret and if I decide not to upgrade the catapults then my opponent will simply be told that they're not upgraded!