Desert & Diamondplate Basing - How To

For my Dark Eldar army, I was faced with a challenge.  Wyches had to be on slot bases since the connection point of the foot was way too weak to connect with any specialty resin bases.  I also wanted to have a base that could both work on a desert "arena" area as well as on board a raider or my pleasure ship (out of Return of the Jedi) that I'll eventually have.

I picked up a bunch of diamond plate plastic from Plastruct product code: 91682.  I started by cutting out various shapes and gluing them down to the base. I then added one layer of sand, not overlapping any of the plastic.

At this point, I wanted to make sure the sand looked like it was blowing over the edges of the decking.  I layered on a second portion of sand over the edges of the decking and raised other areas of the sand to give it depth.

 

I then primed the models and started with the decking first.  

- Based Tin Bitz

- Heavy drybrush of Dwarf Bronze

- Drybrush of Chainmail

- Washed with Devlan Mud

Now I let the ink dry for awhile and could start on the sand.
- First I drybrushed very lightly another coat of Chainmail to pick up the raised part of the decking
- Heavy coat of Khemri Brown on the sand
- Drybrush heavy Desert Sand
- Drybrush Bleached Bone
- Painted the lip of the base black (personal preference).

I'm happy with how they turned out.  Simple but effective.  I'll spend some time next stepping how I did the flesh tones.  This weekend will be a lot of work around the house but I'm going to try and build some of my beastman Wrack substitutes so the Wyches have something to fight in the arena!

Ork skin care products?

I was out doing a little shopping with the wife and we drove through a parking lot of the local strip mall.  My wife started laughing and pointed to the sign. Although she has no intentions of ever coming to the dark side of her hobby, she at least picks up on the humor.

I couldn't resist taking a picture. 

I'll be traveling to Toronto and Minneapolis this week so I won't be able to get any painting in until the weekend.  I'm going crazy with all the cool options the Dark Eldar have.  I think it's going to come down to playing a bunch of games to see how they all work together.

Completed Raider & Wych

I had a blast painting the raider and the test wych model.  I didn't add any of the extra crew on the raider yet since I wanted to make sure that they'll fit in the new battlefoam trays I have coming.  I went with a different metal color for the exhaust, which helps break up all the silver.  Additionally I downloaded a bunch of Japanese Kanji translations... since my Kabaal is the "Kabaal of the Death Rune" the word on the side is "Death Dream" and I put "Poison" up in a couple places.  Figure it'd make it more fun.

For the wych, I kept with my desert / diamondplate basing scheme.  I'll post a how-to on that as soon as I'm able to prime my next set of miniatures (pouring rain here).  Here's how I did the skin tone - I wanted to keep it easy.

- Base Dneb Stone
- Heavy wash of Leviathan Purple
- Paint raised areas Dneb Stone
- 2/3 water & 1/3 Asurman Blue wash
- Raised areas 1/2 Dneb Stone 1/2 White

I'm pretty happy.  For the hair it was:

- Base Mechrite Red
- Paint Blood Red
- Wash Leviathan Purple
- Highlight Blazing Orange

I just got the first season of Sparticus Blood on the Sand, looking forward to getting some inspiration for making my abhuman wrack gladiators.  This has been some of the most fun I've had on a project yet.

DE Wrack Conversion - Ideas

I really want to put together wracks for the Dark Eldar, but I think I'm going to go a different path when it comes to conversion.  I've heard we may get new models in the summer timeframe but that's not stopping me from coming up with some neat ideas.

I really like the idea of having a gladiator arena in my display board and with that it would be cool to have different beasts and subhumans fighting it out with the wytches.  What better to be a good adversary to get butchered up in the arena then a counts-as wrack?  My first thought was to go with some sort of catachan base and add spikes, armor, and cruel weapons.  I just never really liked the models so I figured I'd scrap that. 

There are some awesome pre-made gladiators from Dark Art Miniatures but most tournaments require mostly GW based minis.  That throws out the easy method of just doing premade miniatures.

I then scanned the GW website for some suitable plastic replacements (plastic is so much easier to work and game with).  Two kits I think might be a great baseline for gladiators are the Beastmen Gor Herd and the Maurauders of Chaos.  Both of these have a dark look about them.  I'm torn on which would be the better kit.  Maybe ultimately I do a mixture of both?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Deathstars/Hammers value in Dark Eldar?

Part of the fun of trying new armies is learning new play styles and approaching 40k from different angles.  One list building habit I always get into is building a hammer/deathstar unit.  Call it a unit of terminators in a land raider, nob biker unit, thunderwolves, etc. It's the unit you can hammer into the opponent and cause a lot of damage.  Plus it's a force that intimidates.

When building out my Dark Eldar, I have thought about the same thing.  Nasty characters with big incubi units, bloodbrides with Lelith, beast squads, and other things that can dish out a bunch of attacks.  With the fragile delivery system of DE, maybe I'm going about this the wrong way.  This codex is all about the "death of a thousand cuts".  I think maybe my goal is to really take advantage of the mid range firepower and speed of the DE instead of throwing a haymaker.

The large assault units are not only heavy in the points but put a lot of hope in the staying power long term of the unit - which DE do not have like most other hammer units. If I were to eliminate the thought of a hammer assault unit, is this the best path?  Yes and no.  I still need something to take on my opponent's nastiness.  That's where I feel bloodbrides with shardnets come in. 

Instead of barreling down the flank or middle with raiders filled with wyches, I think I'll take a couple and use them as a counter punch when the pain comes to my area by leaving them back or even in reserve.  The shardnets can do a good job neutralizing the combat characters, and the 4+ invulnerable save (combined with feel no pain if I start with a haemonculus) should tarpit up a unit for awhile. 

We'll see if this strategy pays off.  At least I can try a new strategy out!

Display Cases Needed

Now that Adepticon is done, it's time to "pimp my basement".  It's really sad, most of my armies are collecting dust in foam cases.  I tend to shelve armies almost immediately after the initial tournament use; I'm a weird individual that likes the creation process almost more then the finished product.

I now have these two huge finished rooms in the basement just dying for some decoration.  I like to keep all of my "geek" stuff in the basement, so I think it's time to spend some money and show it off.  First off, I need to find some good display cases.  I'd love to get any ideas that you might have, right now I'm leaning to this one above from Ikea for about $60.  Any other suggestions?

Next step this summer will be the creation of a couple of gaming boards.  I'm thinking I'll go with the ultra portable and either get some mats from Zuzzy or even maybe use a combination of the GW gaming table with some of my own custom tiles. 

Dark Eldar are making some major progress.  I'm traveling to Toronto & Minneapolis over the next few weeks for work and the first round of the NHL playoffs start (Go Blackhawks!) so that will be a bit of a distraction.

Dark Eldar Test Model Done

Finished up my test model, I ended up going with the middle silver - the slightly bluish tint.  After working through the first few plates, I realized how small of an area I was working with.  Nothing like space marine armor with the large surface area!  So the thought of doing gold detailing throughout is nixed.  Instead I put a few gold designs throughout.  I think I'll do some random plates in gold too to bring out the chaotic look. 

Overall, I'm pretty happy.  The deckplate didn't come out as planned, next round I will start with that so I can get a good drybrush in then move on to the sand.  I think I need to line in some black again to create more separation the the plates as well.  The next step is to come up with the army logo / kabaal name.  I think purple and green ended up being neat accent colors. 

The raider will leave me a lot more space for freehand runes.  I'm really looking forward to the big plates and sails.