Warlocks: the first two.

In games-workshop there are lots of groups of miniatures, there are miniatures that cannot stand the pass of time, there are miniatures that being new are awful, and there are miniatures that are so well designed that are in production twenty year after they were first released, that is the case of the eldar warlocks.

The eldar warlocks are so cool miniatures, of course you can see that they are old, but they still got this edge of coolness that make people around the world paint them using the latter techniques that makes the warlock outstand over newer minis (indeed, almost every mini you can buy now is newer than the eldar warlocks).

Not only they are cool, but they are from a time in which lots of miniatures were released for a single entry in the book so we had two warlocks with laspistol (one with a spear and the other one with a sword), one with deer horns in the helmet, one with a huge spear, one standing with his sword resting in the ground (the one with the pelt in his back) and one charging with a two handed sword.
After this a pair more were released, the ´lock aiming his shuriken pistol and the one which sword has to be glued (the first of them that came in two pieces).
And despite they have all this minis for a single concept... every mini is a great mini.

Today I will introduce you to the first two I´ve painted for my new eldar army, the warlock that is swinging his sword and the one with the huge spear.

This minis are painted with almost the same colours as my craftworld, but in a kinda darker scheme, that is cause I´ve not applied the last highlight in Americana Baby blue.

They were primed with GW Chaos Black.
Painted with GW Shadow Grey.
Heavy washed with GW Asurmen Blue.
Drybrushed with GW Shadow Grey.
Drybrushed with Vallejo Grey Blue.
Highlighted with Vallejo Grey Blue.

The whites and blacks are painted as ever.

I struggled finding the colour of the witchblades/spears, but soon I realized that being darker eldar than the usual one painting the witchblade white will do two tricks, the first is have a lot of contrast with the rest of the mini and the second is that the blades look as if they were made out of wraithbone.

The gem in the chest and the eyelenses are painted purple, like every other mini in my army, and the other gems are painted purple and red at random.

Hope you like them.


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Present for a friend: BA Stormraven Gunship.

Hi all, Do you remember my previous post?

Well, today I am going to show you the BA stormraven painted by my friend In Cavda Venenum from Maestros del Capitulo.

He built the stormraven as it is in the box, except for the huge blood angels symbols, that are so thick that they are a piece that gives the model the sense of "plastic toy" that every painter tries to avoid.

He has painted it priming the thing two times, one prime with black and the other with a primer from an army painter spray called dragon red, if memory serves me well... that is a thing my memory don´t uses to do.

Thing is with this two layers of primer the shadows get obscured while giving a nice base coat of red to the mini.

After this the mini has been drybrushed with blood red, to give it a more bright look.

The metallics are painted with the usual inks technique.

He inked the inner part of the crystals, and it looks good, but the pictures doesn´t do justice to the effect he achieved.

There you can see it.

My friend painted smoke dirt in line with the missiles, which gives a nice weathered look along with all the dirt trails painted in the hull, which adds a more realistic look to the whole mini.

This is a picture of the stormraven and the dreadnought together so you can see the full present we gave this friend.

And this is the whole present with a tactical squad of this same friend being painted by in cavda venenum.

Yep, they are eleven troopers cause there is an infiltrated guy painted by another friend.

And this is all for now, next posts... Warlocks.

Hope you liked it.

Present for a friend: BA Librarian Dreadnought.

Hi all, this post is about a present we did for a friend.

Thing is in my gaming group there is a guy that is the most enthusiastic person I´ve ever played with, he loves the fluff he loves the miniatures, he loves the game, he loves the other 40k based games... but he hates to paint the minis and remove the mould lines (his minis gain +1 armor due the high amount of armour :) ), so some friends are painting his minis, slow but purposefuly, pun intended.

His birthday was the previous week, so we bought him a stormraven and a libby dreadnought, a friend painted the SR and I built and painted the dreadnought.

The very moment you open the kit and see the sprues, you realize that it is a miniature you will enjoy building and painting, first of all, the three sarcophagus are a great idea, that let you easily build one of the three frames available for the Blood Angels.

Apart from this, the sprue is filled with icons, detailed parts and options that you can use, so it is the best dreadnought kit until now, on par with the space marine venerable dreadnought kit.

The other thing that surprised me in the good sense of "surprise" are the power fists.

There are two possibilities while setting the "fingers", in 90 degrees scheme or in a more hand-like design, with three fingers one near the other and the last one in front of the middle one, like an opposable thumb.

Apart from this you can put standard fingers on it or the dreaded blood claws, which, removing the little drop of blood in the base of the claw, are pretty good to use in a space wolves dread (indeed this claws are exactly like the old metal Bjorn dread CCW).

I´ve assembled it with the force weapon, the dreadnought power fist and a meltagun so it is suited to kill monsterous creatures, powered armour guys and vehicles (almost the whole 40k unit spectrum).

The dread was primed black with a GW spray, the basecoat is foundation mechrite red.
Then I carefully drybrushed blood red and after this I light drybrushed blazing orange, aplying the last highlights with the same blazing orange.

That was done AFTER a chainmail coat heavy washed with badab black was applied.

The seals, papers and wings were painted with foundation Dheneb Stone, then highlighted with vallejo´s silvergrey and the final highlights were done with vallejo white, the same white technique I use in my Eldar.

The sarcophagus was painted with shadow grey, washed with asurmen blue in the recesses, light drybrushed with vallejo grey blue, highlighted with the same vallejo grey blue and for the final highlights the prominent areas were painted with Americana baby blue.
This is the same technique I used in my eldar, which gives a darker look to the blues.

As my friend´s company is the fifth, I hand painted a "V" in the right leg cover and every blood drop with has a red background is painted black (the company symbols is a single black blood drop) and any other painted red.

The next post will be the stormraven painted by a friend.


Tell me what you think about it.

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Phoenix Lords: Asurmen, the hand of Asuryan.

Today is the turn of the first Phoenix Lord: Asurmen, the hand of Asuryan.

Being the Dire Avengers a good shooting unit, is strange that Asurmen is a CC beast, cause, being realistic, his dual shuriken catapults aren´t Asurmen´s best way to deal with, with his skill, initiative, powers, eternal warrior ability and invulnerable save, it makes thought opponent for almost any unit.

Thing is that, with the current rules, point-wise, is better to include a farseer than a phoenix lord (except for fuegan, in my opinion), but sometimes it will be cool, fun and characterful to add a PL to the army, so I´m slowly painting them.

This mini is a very good mini, but you can notice that is an old mini by looking at his pose, and proportions.

Despite that, the mini is still cool and with tons of details, and is fun to paint, not as fun as fuegan, but fun after all.

I´ve painted it to match my dire avenger scheme, but his left shoulderpad is white and his gems, as fuegan´s, are yellow.

I´ve replaced his HUGE standart and added a weird thing I found in the Dire Avengers´ sprue and will use his standart to make an objective marker.
Comments and criticism are welcome, as ever.

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Dire Avengers.

Today is the turn for the Dire Avengers, one of my preferred units of the eldar codex.

Don´t know what it is, maybe the spartan look of the helmet, the cool look of the armour, the fluff or whatever, but they are one of the most cool units in warhammer.
And the exarch is an impressive miniature to behold, and a delight to assemble.

Despite they are one of my favourite aspects, as I paint my miniatures unassembled, this units took me so long to finish that I started to despair, cause they were lots of things to paint and take care of. But as soon as I finished them, I was so proud of them that I loved them once more :D (and I will paint two more full units of them).

This guys will be mounted in a wave serpent, and will be used to late turn contests and for finishing enemy units with a volley of bladestormed shuriken catapults as well as to hunt horde units like IG conscripts or Tyranid gaunts.

So here they are, I´ve painted them in the main scheme of the army, black underarmour, blue plates, white helmet and black faceplate, but in the avengers the soulgem is painted in red, cause they have the weapon closer to the body and a purple colour for the gem will look too dark.

A shot from behind.

A pair of Avengers so you can see the details.

The exarch: I´ve planned to build one exarch with each one weapon configuration: this with the lance and the shimmering shield, other with the sword and the last with the dual shuriken catapults.

The shimmering shield and the blade are painted metallic and purple washed.

A shot of his back.

Hope you like it.
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Howling Banshees: Second Batch.

There is my second batch of howling banshees:

A detail of a banshee.

In this batch, the exarch comes armed with a executioner.

Yes the executioner is bent because is a total pain to assemble.

A detail of the Exarch.

Next post: Dire Avengers.

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Howling Banshees: First Batch.

Ah, the good ol´banshees, a unit which holds the privilege to be one of the masters of CC (mistress in this particular case).

With his initiative, his abilities and a power weapon you can expect the banshees to cause so much pain and discomfort in the heavy armored infantry of the enemy, the only issue is their low strenght, which can be compensated by powers from a supporting farseer or adding jain zar to the squad, but the latter solution is a bit pricy.

The case is that the banshees are usually painted in brownish colours, but I prefer my banshees to fit a bit more with the "ghostly" look that the aspect name implies, so I painted them white with clothes and crest in blue, which I think gives them the proper phantasmal look although a bit dirty.

Here they are.

Here you can see the crest and tabard colours.

A pair of banshees.

The swords are painted metallic and heavy washed with asurmen blue.

As almost every one in my craftworld, except for the characters, their gems are purple and red.

Here is the exarch with dual sabres.

I have to wash with badad black the space marine helmet in the base.

A detail of the mask and the sword.

Hope you like it.

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Objective Marker.

Here is my first objective marker for the eldar: a Wraithlord sword stuck into stone, like a giant future elven excalibur.

I didn´t thought about some history to fit this objective marker or make some planning and designing of it, I jus saw the wraithsword while cutting the wraithlords out their sprues and started to play with the spare bits, added a bit of a bright lance to the bottom of the blade and a bit of a heavy weapon to the bottom of the latter, and with a spare bit of polystyrene and a spare monster base it came together.

I´m still thinking what to do in the marker to make it "come to life" and add a bit more of character to it, I will paint the "rune" in the blade and try to add a directional source of light to the rock from the sword.


P.D.: I also played with the glue and the sand in the base, that is why there are "waves" in it.

What do you think?.

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