Status of the eldar army I

Okay, with all those short battle reports done, let me tell you about the state of my eldar army:

Basically in pieces. I stripped all the tanks from the cheap primer I used and scraped the new flying bases I build.

I also went on a small shopping and bartering tour. For general use I ordered a couple of vallejo paints (mainly from the model air range), a cheap Dremel copy, a painting DVD from Mig Jimenez and swapped the two cheap guns from my ebay airbrush kit for a decent gun. So now I'm a proud owner of a Harder & Steenbeck Evolution Silverline 2in1. After seeing the fantastic new prism/spinner, I ordered two kits from wayland games, my fifth Fire Dragon box, 2 FW falcon mk2 conversion kits and one noble and two mages from the WHF High Elf range. Those will form the base for my yriel and seer conversions. The flaming swords will be used on my destructor warlocks, for WYSIWYG purposes. I also increased my stock of ork heads  from MicroArt-Studio up to 70, with the main bulk being the gas mask versions (I hate to paint faces!).

To create a balance in my bank account I went through my stock of eldar models and decided to sell all those models, who never saw the battlefield so far. My third lord (who came without a sword anyway), some spare DA, my reapers, the prism conversions and the FW spinner tanks.

That reduces my tank force down to 6 serpents, 2 Mk2 Falcons, 2 Spinner/Prism and a single firestorm. Add 6 walkers and 2 Lords (one of them magnetized, the other with BL/Sword). Still enough to keep me busy of the next months.

My goal now is to get some practice with the airbrush and then paint the upper and lower parts of my skimmers separately. After that I will borrow a fast painting/airbrush technique for troops I saw at warseer and redo my flying bases and parts of the magnetized weapons. I simplified my intended scheme again, dropping the grey tones for black, thus making it a simple black+violet scheme with emerald as a third color. That should give the army a slightly darker feeling, which fits my intend of a corsair force.

I also fooled around with the combi tool, finding a easy way to attach corsair cloaks to Guardian and Avenger models by sheer accident. So my plan is to shave/sand those cloaks in the fitting shape, paint them separately and then glue them on the model after painting most of it with the airbrush. That won't give me a good CMON rating, but I won't ever host pictures of that army on CMON anyway and my only target is to get a clean painted army fast. If the bulk of the infantry units are only something between normal or good tabletop standard, I'm fine with it. I only want to play with painted models, who are not crusted all over with undiluted paint, getting even nominated for best painted isn't really my goal.

So right at the moment I cleaned my table after preparing the mk2 falcon and the spinner kits for assembly and magnetizing. Hope I will get those done tomorrow. I also got my hands on some of those old ed2 eldar special weapon sprues, so you may see pictures of Storm Guardians with cloaks and 2 flamers in the near future.For the destructor-lock I will aim for a pirate sergeant conversion, using a DA-exarch shield arm for the 4+ inv save, a sword from one of the WHF kits instead of the normal  witchblade and a dragon breath flamer from the FD kit, which represents his S5 ap4 template power.

The working schedule for the next month looks basically like that:



Assembling & Conversions:

1. assemble the new spinner tanks and convert the existing falcons into mk2 version
2. magnetize them and repair some of the serpent turrets.
3. build Yriel with a magnetized arm, allowing me to swap the spear for a fusion gun (plain autarch), bring my DA force up to 15 converted models and finish the last details on my jetlock councils.
4. convert a squad of storm guardians and 2 small squads of jetbikes. 

 Painting:

1. practicing 101 airbrush basics like dots, lines, getting a clean base-coat done and masking off areas.
2. practice my color scheme and the black to violet blend/fade I want to achieve on a spare 1:35 tank model
3. paint all the tanks
4. do some test miniatures for the infantry models, practicing zenithal highlights 
5. paint 15 DA and 25 dragons

I may start playing the army again after finishing the skimmer tanks, but right at the moment I can't field them. Half of them sits disassembled in a box, the other half in bucket full a antiseptic soap, which works quit nicely to strip of paint.   

That's enough for today, I save my afterthoughts from the tournaments for the next posting.

Cheers, Karnstein