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Author Topic: The Dawnlight Host of Agria-Tanoc  (Read 1349 times)

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Offline Dawnlight Avenger

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    • Bryan Maynard - Sculptor
  • Armies: Craftworld Eldar, Tau, Imperial Guard
The Dawnlight Host of Agria-Tanoc
« on: July 15, 2012, 09:23:17 PM »
Hello all!

To preface this blog, I want to make it known that it will be very picture-heavy, as a heads-up to users with limited bandwidth.
Also, I should point out to my readers that this first post is a long one.

I am currently embarking on a project of titanic proportions: to make a finished Eldar Warhost. To most Eldar players, this sounds pretty innocuous. However, I have over 10k worth of Eldar, some of it unbuilt even. I have been playing Eldar for almost 10 years now, and it is definitely my longest-running army. My collection has been growing organically the entire time I've been playing, and I haven't always been very good at keeping up with my army. In addition to that, I was able to pick up 800 usd worth of Eldar off a friend for a quarter of that price. Most of the models need stripping, as he didn't have standards anywhere near as high as mine.

As a result, I have a messy, uncoordinated army that looks just about as good as it works on the table. To get a rough idea, here's some pics of my model shelf:

I apologize for the lack of quality in some of these pictures, my camera is a bit dated at this point


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In addition to that, I have 6 more falcon chasis sitting on my computer desk:


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And two flyers (which, with the advent of 6th, I am psyched about!):


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Unfortunately (for me), i have even more models on my workbench, but they are going to be the focus of the first few entries in this blog.

War Walkers
I had originally bought 6 when the 4th Ed Eldar premiered and the walkers were sold in boxes of three. When I was rummaging around in my warhammer folders, I found an old picture that shows all of them shortly after I bought them:


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Time was not nice to this unit, between their fragility and several moves, they suffered a lot of damage. When I finally got around to working on them again, some 6 years later, they looked more like this:


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I spent quite a bit of time repairing these guys. First off, I had to salvage what I could off of the worst of them to repair the other 4 (he'll become terrain or something). I have no idea where 6 went off to, maybe I'll find him chilling with my old wraithlord... xD. Below are what the remaining walkers look like now.


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Although two of my walkers broke off their bases, all of the weapon mounts on my broke off, so this was the next thing to fix. I decided that I wanted to be able to quick-swap the weapons on the walkers, rather than having to build a perplexing number of walkers to give me the versatility I need. This is where my metal-working skills come in handy.


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Here is a brass stand-off that i've built by taking a 1/8" brass rod, and by using larger sizes of tubing, I've made stepping to detail the mounts. To make these indestructable, I soldered the brass parts together. After all, I would hate for these to fall apart as easily as the crummy plastic mounts that come with the models.

In order to make the magnet sit properly, and to further detail the mount, I made brass "crowns" to act as a sleeve over the magnets. These guys take about a half hour each to cut out of the tubing, so I have yet to finish them for all the walkers.


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The finished mounts I think look pretty attractive and are a good solution to the fragile ones that come with the models:


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One of the next steps is to take the wave serpent weapon shields and magnetize those as well. While this might make my War Walkers look more like wasps, the original shield plates were pretty wimpy and I can't really figure out a way to magnetize those!

While I have spent a good amount of time on the walkers, they are more of a back-burner project and only really see progress once or twice a week.

Guardians


To some of the veterans here, these guys may look a little familiar. This is a project of mine that's now 2 years in the works, and you have no idea how much I would love to be done with it. Right now, the models are almost ready for casting. I'm hoping to have the molds for the initial sprues done by august, and maybe be working on the weapons sprues before September.


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Every so often, I take a break from my headline project to touch these guys up. Which leads me to...

Striking Scorpions

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Aside from Warp spiders, these guys are my favorite aspect. I've had this particular unit almost since the beginning of the army, and they've only been fully painted once (almost as long ago as I've owned them). having this unit sitting, unpainted, on my shelf was driving me crazy, especially since they've been doing so well in battle.

I've got a little bit of a WIP for this unit. As you can see, two of the models in the opening picture are unpainted (not including the exarch on the far right). they got left out of the initial que and I had to bring them up to the level that the rest of the unit is at so that I can consistantly paint them. Below are a few images of them as they get painted.

After undercoat:

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After Basecoat:

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And finally, after primary color:

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These guys both came out pretty well. I have yet to begin working with the bone colors on these two. I've currently got two more of them to highlight. Once that's done, it's on to bone for the rest of the unit.

A small detail you might notice is that, while these are the 3rd ed scorpions, they lack the traditional "bucked-teeth" look. I decided to sculpt over it since I personally thought it was the one weak point of the models. I have a second unit of the same generation that will be receiving similar treatment.

The biggest part of this unit is doing justice to my Exarch Veredras. He has been a vital warrior in my lists since practically the beginning of the warhost, and has accounted for hundreds of kills at this point. The only other character that has been in my army for that long has been the craftworld's high farseer (who now plays as a "counts as" Eldrad).

Anyways, I have an Exarch model that I have been toying with for awhile now, who is converted from a base scorpion model.


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I ground out the arm holding the shuriken pistol and swapped it for his Scorpion's Claw. Some minimal sculpting has been done to finish up the left arm, although I believe that I have a little more work to do here before I'm satisfied. I also want to resculpt the chest area, and possibly even make a new helmet for him, since I still am on the fence about the 4th ed Exarch helmet he got somewhere along the lines...
I'm also not sure what to do with his right arm. I think I may end up scratch-building him his own chainsword, but I'm not sure on this one (I would like him to be done sometime this year xD)

That's pretty much all I've got for now. I'm sorry that this turned into a mega-post, but, then again, this is a massive project.

If you're looking for more pictures, head over to my gallery

-Valkyrie
War gaming is more than a hobby,
it's a lifestyle

The Listening Post - A Hobby Blog

 


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