The Blood Rain Kabal gets some Venom

 The first of three Venoms joins the Blood Rain Kabal today.  I've been doing these in an assembly line style so the next two are just getting the final adjustments and should finish up in the next couple of days.

Ive decided that the Kabal Trueborn will be in Gray/Black.  This should cover the new production figures.  My original paint scheme has the warriors in an ochre yellow which will be retained for the vat born scum.

  The splinter cannon/twin linked splinter rifle option is magnetized and the flag poles are currently removable.  Depending on how the model sits in case this may be changed to a permanent mounting.    The slave snares are glued on and I'll probably do one of the set with blades instead of the chains.

 The inside of the cockpit is detailed and remains visible through the full canopy.  I opted for the full canopy on all three of the set primarily to reduce dust issues.  I'm not certain how I'd get  dust out of the cockpit with the windscreen only option installed.

Raging Heroes Ashara standing in as a Dark Eldar Archon

I got a shipment of figures in from Raging Heroes about a month ago and had to bump the Ashara SF figure to the top of the pile.  Not that I need a cool new Archon for my Blood Rain Kabal, but she was just too tempting to wait her turn.

There is no shortage of detail and it is really a beautiful sculpt.  I especially appreciate all the different head and weapon option which I can mine for future conversions. 

Once I began painting a couple of things turned up immediately.  The most salient of which was that most of the wonderful detail is very soft edged... rounded even.  This soft border is especially prevalent on the filigree bits on her flowing sleeves.  I hadn't noticed this until I got started but it has an effect on technique.  Many techniques use the sharp edge of details to help carry and control paint, especially in fine lining.  The details here are so indistinct around the edge that these techniques are not as effective.  Essentially the detailing has a large freehand element.  This is not inherently bad but makes a difference in how much time it takes me to turn out a decent figure.  I'd intended to just have a quick run at her with a basic scheme and continue with the previously scheduled work.  No plan ever survives contact with the enemy!

The other odd bit was that the figure has cast in pins but they don't actually help with alignment.  Ultimately I ended up removing them and pinning traditionally.

I'm still quite taken with the figure even though it is a lot more work than I'd originally imagined.  I have a couple more of these in both the fantasy and sf version so I'll get plenty of practice.

Ghosts and a Shadowseer

 Today I have a quick go at zenithal and point source highlighting.  I picked these vintage ghosts because they were open and lying about... and because it occurred to me that the essential monochrome nature of the subject would make it easier to pay attention to the highlights and not get distracted by the details.  I just picked out a a basic zenithal theme on the figure in general, mostly limiting this to the final highlight on the robes and hair.

 I used the same figures to experiment with some point source lighting using the eye(s) as the source.  I'm starting to get the hang of it... there is still a way to go but these figures helped me cement the concept and refine some acutal hands on technique.

 
 In keeping with my current focus on filling out the Dark Eldar I finished up a Finecast Harlequin Shadowseer.  I also have an enormous Craftworld Eldar army and I like the link up that the harlequins represent.  After all only the eldar themselves really make the distinction between Dark and Craftworld... for most of the galaxy they are just seen collectively as those treacherous, weedy, pointy-eared, alien gits!

I also started work on three Dark Eldar Venoms.  The lower hull sections are complete with the exception that I haven't drilled in the magnets for the weapon mounts.  I played a few games last week using proxies for these and learned a lot about how they could fit into my army.  I'm thinking that three is about ideal for my style and that some lists, primarily my Carnival of Pain" will really only use 2.  All of this assuming a points total in the vicinity of 2k.

This week should see more work on the venoms and on Greasus Goldtooth.

Dark Eldar Webway Portals and Status Markers from Silver Compass Designs

For the Dark Eldar set I had a blast.  Working with Silver Compass Designs - Precision Lasered Gaming Gear I was able to design every piece and started with Web-Way Portals!  I've always wanted something decent to represent the portal especially since using regular blast markers ran the risk of them being accidentally picked up or moved during the game.

These have the Rune for my Blood Rain Kabal and a nice retro sci-fi swirl pattern.


 The three part pain tokens are a cool idea.  Here I've color coded them to make it easier to pick out the correct pieces to make the complete pain token.  These are a regular production item but they replaced the evil demon face with my Kabal Rune for no additional cost.  

After the long Ork status marker project I opted for a less fidgety approach for the Dark Eldar.  These look great and only took about a quarter of the work time the Ork set took.  For the Ork counters I did a two tone, comic book style paint scheme.  For the Dark Eldar I used a single color inside each cut.  Looks very clean and, since there are still several cuts per counter they are very colorful.

The finished set complete with a Bag from Marsbarn.  This is a Celtic Knot bag that I'd intended to use for Wood-Elf accessories so I'll likely have another bag made up featuring the Kabal Rune. It may not look like it but there are 201 counters in this set... all stacked very precisely!

 The vehicle status markers are all shaped to drop onto the sideboard of the old style dalk eldar raider... OOPS!  They'll still work just fine set beside the new vehicles.  I briefly thought about having them cut with some sort of loop to hang them from the vehicles but that pretty quickly got moved to the idea of FAIL pile.

This is how the set arrived.  Looks pretty cool even before its painted! 

Dark Eldar Reaper ready for action

 The Reaper sail is ready.  Like the Razorwing this is a very clean finish with little weathering.  These are being integrated into my legacy Dark Eldar which are also in a very clean, unweathered, style.  I may decide to revisit the army as a whole and weather them together in future but for now I'm concentrating on getting them playable with a good, unified, look.

 To the right you can see the Raider sitting in the display case next to the Gargantuan Squiggoth.  I can just imagine the Orks jeering at the weedy Eldar and their puny sailboat! 

"Oi!  What iz dat!?... a Weedy Git ...flyin... trukk?....HAHAHAHAHAHA!  Oi ladz... KEEL IT!"

Speaking of Orks I finally finished off the counter set with infantry status markers, a big WaaagH! token, and a special die with the Waaagh!'s logo in the 6 slot.  I had a last minute fail though.... I took a break from painting while my wife was home for some R&R and the first peice I did when she left was the big Waaagh! marker.  Unfortunately I incorrectly remembered the color scheme and neglected to check it before actually putting down paint.  As a result the colors of the Jolly Ork are darker than for the rest of the set.  I corrected this for the infantry status markers so the fail was limited... the the biggest marker of the set!  DOH!  A custom, square bottom, dice bag will easily contain the counters and completes the accessories for "Da Big Red WAAAGH!"