WIP; New Farseer / Autarch on Bike

Another weekend has passed, another opportunity got Hobby.

I've been working on this guy for most of the weekend, slowly getting him done and put together in my time. He will be replacing my Farseer hopefully, though said said, I am still very pleased with my current Farseer on bike, hes just starting to get a bit worn and torn from his rigorous tabletop attitude of trying and deliberately failing dangerous terrain tests.

Anyway, this model will also be filling in for an Autarch with PW when I need one in my seer council, as both my Autarch models have Lances, just because lances are sweet lookin'.

I've used a kit-bash from about 5 kits, thank god for bits boxes.

Bike and Torso and Left arm are from the Shining Spears kit - two boxes gave me a spare bike and Exarch (max in a squad is 5).

Sword arm is from the Autarch on bike box, awesome box - some of the stuff in it is sweet, however fiddly.

The robes for the legs and cape are from the High Elf Mounted Mage kit.

And of course the obligatory WIP shots. Still parts to be worked on, most notably the rider himself.









Here is an unfortunately slightly blurry old picture of my current Farseer and part of the Seer Council.

As I've said there's still work to be done, especially on the robes and sanding some greenstuff down.

Seer and Spear Council

So I have an Autarch with Lance on bike. The model is really sweet, though I didn't put those back banners on as they are cool bits to have ;).

I also picked up 2 boxes of Shining Spears.

So, I'm playing around with the idea of running a 'dual council'. Unfortunately the Spear Council is from memory 235, not including the Autarch. That totals just over 300 points for the secondary council. The trade off is making the seer council either 10, or having a soft super counter assault unit.

4 more warlocks are 12 extra attacks, plus 4 more heavy flamers. Whereas the spear council is 18 attacks of S6 PWs and +1 reserves.

They are very vulnerable to shooting unfortunately, unlike the seer council, where it takes multiple shots to start knocking them down.

I might keep it to large games where the option to run a 10 man Seer council and 5 spears is viable. Perhaps 2250-2500.

Tips and tricks for painting

While I apply these to Eldar, they are applicable to other armies, very easily. I'm sure many of you already know about these, or already do them.

There is a short list of things which you can do to really make your painting pop. Whether you choose to do so on all of your models, some of, or none is entirely your choice. Personally I tend to implement these on leader models, such as Exarchs, Farseers, Warlocks and Autarchs etc.

Something I'd like to cover first are eyes.

I know many people have trouble with just getting the paint neatly into the eye socket without it going everywhere. I did too. The easiest way I've found to do eyes is with a watered down paint into the socket.

First off, once that dries, it won't look any different, maybe a little bit neater. This brings to bear another technique that is common on higher painting circles, such as Golden Demon. This technique is Black Lining.

So you get the eye, and with some very watered down black paint with some wash (I use about 2:1:1 Water to paint, and wash. There is no ideal uniform ratio for any paint consistency, it just depends on your paints and you.) and you'll want to get it within the recesses. Try to not get this part onto the 'body' of the eye as it can lead to inconsistency in the colour spread of the eyes.

Finally, outside the eye socket you cab highlight the outer rim of the eye socket to the brightest colour that you have on the face.

WIP Wave Serpent.

I've been working on this for the last few days. Playing around with Freehand.

You'll notice from the pics there was a dragon. He looked silly. I called him Gary.

Gary looked out of place, so Gary is gone now.

I replaced him with lots of scales. Forget ever doing that again, and if I do, they will not be the same colour as the tank.

Got some valuable practice on techniques and colours I'm not really familiar with on this. Experimentation is key!















The finished result (Turret needs to be primed, but its been really wet around here)



The thing I'm probably happiest with is the Energy Fields on the left Wing, and the gems. The eyes came out nice, that is about it really.

I actually can't wait to start on the next one, but until this rain lets up I'll be drilling slate, for my other dragons. Woohoo.

Some more pictures

Today I've got some pics of my jetbike squads and fire prisms. This should hopefully give more examples of freehand. Yay for crazy amounts of freehand being acceptable on Eldar.



Jetbikes




First Prism


This is one jetbike squad and one prism, I'll have the other prism up tomorrow some time.

The Prisms came first, and where I tested out new techniques for flames and lightening. The prisms were really the first play I tried pushing my freehand, steering away from 2d single colour things. I think the freehand on the bikes came out nice, though probably could use some cleaning up on the serpents.

Some pictures of the army.

I'll get some more photos up in due course.

Anyway, apologies for the sometimes poor quality, I can't work the camera properly.

Here are some of the pictures of the Eldar I've painted so far. It's probably about a third of the total amount of Eldar I have painted, and a sixth of what I have to go.





Half of the seer council. Just the 2 warlocks aren't currently painted. I don't have a good picture of the Farseer currently. They're all nowadays slowly starting to accumulate battle damage.

Definitely considering buying some storm guardians and doing a new SC, even though the warlocks, in my opinion, on bikes totally look pimp.






Here are some of my Falcon. As you can see the weapon options need to be finished, and should be done when the rain lets up so I can file and undercoat them.

The falcon was my first real experiment with large mural-esque freehand. Everything before hand really was just simple stuff.

Tomorrow I'll upload the other batch, including 2 prisms and 6 bikes plus the WS I'm currently working on.

3+ Saves

Today I played a game against a new marines player.

He had footslogging BAngles;

Astorath
Sanguinary Guard x 6
15 DC with packs
10 AMs with packs
20 Tacs
5 Devastators, 2 Las 2 Plasma
2 DC dreads

I won in T3 as he eloped, but for the first two turns of shooting, despite the fact I was putting in 20-30 wounds a turn thanks to the silly amount of pie plates I had (2 Prisms + 2 Gunboat Serpents + Falcon with EML + Destructor Wash) He would only take 2-5 wounds total.

I guess its normal, but seriously some ridiculous rolls. I don't know whether I need some more AP3 weapons, since only when I unleashed the Dragons and smaller pieplates did the casualties flow.

The game was 2000, though I used my 1750 list, with some extra goodies, like an Autarch with Mandiblasters + PW, and gunboat serpents.

Not really note worthy, Annihilation, Spearhead deployment. He was a new player to 40k 5th ed.

But yes, to the topic at hand; damned 3+ saves!

First Dragon Squad finished!

Next time I'm going to start up from Tausept Ochre as opposed to Red Gore. Probably adds 1 too many layers of paint.



First 6 Dragons done.

Edit: I can't fix the page clipping the image, infernal contraption. If you click it you'll see all 6.

I also took another front on pic of the exarch.

Good Lord, almost a week.

I've been pretty absorbed by painting this guy recently. Apologies for the lack of updates, all my free time has been doing this or assignments. I finish uni next week, for some exams anyway.

Prism WIPs

Here are some pics I have from a while ago of the Fire Prisms I was working on.

I was in the stage of doing the re-freehand and re-highlighting the prisms.

Should give you an idea of what to see in the coming days ;)

Hobby Update

Soo, I'm slightly behind hobby schedule.

That said, Pretty much finished the first squad of dragons, adding the final touches to the exarch, all that remains is the gun. The wave serpents are prepped and ready to be started. I'll get some good sunlight tomorrow in the ye olde lightbox and snap a few good pictures.

Oh noes, tragedy!

On Wednesday I sliced up my index finger pretty bad. Thankfully it was on my non paint brushing hand.

As luck would have it, I had just put a new blade in my knife thus making it much sharper than usual, and cleaner.

So I haven't been able to do any hobby, but hopefully it won't stop my plans for weekend hobby!

So, remember kids, knives are sharp!

Lords update!

I got the stuff I need to finish up for lords stripped and ready to be filed, based, primed and painted.

Currently the list is 2 warlocks on bike, 7 fire dragons and 2 wave serpents. Expect plenty of pictures this weekend, as I am free of uni work for atleast the weekend.

I'll break out the old cardboard box with some white paper and sort out some nice pictures.

I have a couple of old WS FW turrets, and one of them fits what kind of kitup I need - dual shuriken cannons. Unfortunately one of them has been poorly cast so there is alot of work required over this weekend - and since they are assembled with mold lines, I also have to do some careful filing. I've been waiting for the weather to not be so piss cold, and have some free time so I can file the resin outdoors.

I've also got plenty of salvaging work to do, since the other wave serpent turret has weapons glued on, so there will be some fixing to do :)

I'm planning on using some plasticard rod, just because I don't particulary want to be fiddling with magnets on 10 different weapons.

For the record it looks like it needs to be 2mm rod.

Stay tuned!

Harlequins

So, I've acquired 8 Harlies + Shadowseer + Troupe Leader. I've been considering running them with or in lieu of Banshees. With a Doom Seer following them around, the Rending could be more beneficial, considering they are WS5 vs the Shees WS4.

They also have an invulnerable and 3 attacks, 4 on the Charge with Furious Assault. The 5++ with Fortune in the Assault would work a treat against Power weapons, though the 4+ of Shees is a big trade off, if they both have fortune.

Furthermore, Harlies are I6 - the same as some super SCs.

Its a tough call.

I think I'll take both.

:3