Catching Up

 Right. So it's been a while.

The Old World Escalation League ended with me in second place after I failed to play my last game in time (which is still a pretty good result if you ask me!) and the clubs have since moved onto a 40K Escalation League. I decided to use it as an excuse to actually paint up my around 3,000 points of Dark Eldar and have almost completed this mammoth task. All that's left to paint is four kitbashed Incubi for the 5th Edition Codex and four of five skyboard-riding Comorragh gangsters. 

Anyway - here's what I've painted since I last posted. I didn't start painting or modelling again until early July, and it started with some Genestealer Cult stuff:

Second Edition Genestealer Cult army. Magus, Icon bearer, and a bunch of Hybrids and PDF troops, including four heavy weapons teams and an entirely kit-bashed Rapier!

 

The Rapier was built from a huge pile of random parts from vehicles and Imperial Guard kits. I have absolutely no idea where they all came from, but it's mostly Space Marine and Guard parts

Close-up on the Rapier team's spotter/commander - Spare parts from all over the place

Rear view showing the lasgun slung over his back. The gunner has a folding-stock las-carbine attached to his chair

With a few changes (mostly the loss of the heavy weapons teams and Rapier) the Cult makes a reasonably nice little army for 11th Edition 40K too

So after having constructed a bunch of Genestealer Cult types to expand my Necromunda gang into an army, I started painting a bit later in the month:

TOAD - this is something I can use for a variety of things

MORE TOAD

A terrible photo, but this is actually a 3D print of a Rogue Trader period Imperial Army trooper. I painted her like a PDF member and the eventual idea is to have a platoon of these to reinforce my 4th Edition Imperial Guard

 

She was really easy to paint, and I was really impressed at how crisp and clean the print turned out

This is another 3D print - a prisoner mini. I painted her up for Mordheim, mainly as a scenario objective 

She's not having a good time, whatever's happening 

A Skavenslave. Or rather, a human, who is now a slave of the Skaven. The first of what will be a nice big unit of random miniatures for a cheap and disposable element of my 6th Edition Skaven army!

Brands and scarring, because the Skaven aren't very good at "welfare"

The last four troopers for the Paradisan LXIX Infantry's Yellow Company, Red Platoon, 3rd Squad

Webbing, blanket rolls, and equipment

I had some random 2nd Edition figures kicking around in my bits box, and with some work I turned them into a command squad of Imperial Guard indentured to an Inquisitor. I have no idea what I'll do with them, but they can be a bodyguard unit for any one of my (many) Inquisitors

The ID discs on their arms denote them as White Battalion, Blue Company, Red Platoon Command

You can see the pretty basic gear they've got quite well here

Inquisition ID patches!

After this, I dug out my Eldar. I happened to see them while I was rummaging in the garage (I often go for a rummage in the garage) and decided I had to paint them:

First of all, I had to do the iconic ghost warriors, the Wraithguard. These are hefty 2nd Edition metals

Yellow is a colour I actually really enjoy painting, and over a black undercoat no less

Unlike many people I don't paint the blisters on Eldar armour as gems - they're sensors!

I would like more Wraithguard, but the metals are expensive now

Howling Banshees have always been my favourite Aspect. These have the rune of Khaine drawn on their helms in blood, and are all 3rd Edition metals

The Exarch has an Executioner, and her colours are the opposite of the rest - white plume and red armour

They're really dynamic poses

I inverted the yellow armour and blue helms of Iyanden for all the Aspect Warriors

Despite their ferocity they really need a Wave Serpent in order to get into combat in good shape

It's a simple loadout - power swords and shuriken pistols - but they're a terrifying combat unit

Despite the limited poses, I really like the models

They painted up nicely, with a minimum of effort

I like the gladiator-style armour on their left arms

Striking Scorpions! Stealthy heavy armour killers. This lot have a very muted colour scheme in comparison to the rest of the army, with lots of greens. The yellow helms really stand out

What's better than a chainsword? A power claw with a gun on it!

As with most of the army's origin, these are 3rd Edition sculpts

The Exarch's helm tassel is actually a replacement part - the original was long gone when I got it

They're posed really aggressively, which is great, but they do fall over a lot

There aren't many poses, and in a unit of 10 you have to work to get them to look a little different

I like how the spirit stones on their chest armour plate stand out 

When in doubt - more chainswords

They do look like they're a bit out of place in the desert, given all the green, but tradition is tradition

The Warlock on the left is the one I painted in July; the one on the right has been complete for a long time

Classic sculpts from the 1990s, these Eldar are timeless really

Another Jes Goodwin masterpiece, this Warlock with Singing Spear was a joy to paint

I had a lot of fun differentiating between the cloth and armour

This Autarch is much more recent than much of the army - a mix of parts from the two available plastic Autarchs released around 9th Edition, I think

Yes, I have used the Intersectional Pride flag colours on her wings and the Trans flag colours on her headdress, and I'll do it again

She needs some Swooping Hawks to fly alongside really

She has a Striking Scorpion's helm, a Howling Banshee's sword, Swooping Hawk wings, and a Fire Dragon's fusion gun. And her armour plate is reminiscent of the Dire Avengers. She's an experienced combatant, to say the least!

THE AVATAR - no, not that one. This is a manifestation of a fragment of the Eldar war god, Khaela Mensha Khaine (Khorne in a new hat), which sits at the heart of the Craftworld and only comes out for really serious things. I painted it to look like it was white-hot on the inside

Where the Avatar of Khaine walks, the ground burns and sand vitrifies

Smoke forms its headdress plume, and its left hand constantly weeps blood

The Wailing Doom, the Avatar's weapon, is molten like its wielder

Warlock on jetbike, who will eventually be accompanied by a squad of Guardian Jetbikes

I do love the old 2nd Edition plastic Jetbikes (of which I own precisely one), but the new ones are very sleek and very pretty to look at

I also like how they share some design cues with the Dark Eldar Reaver Jetbikes

In the grim darkness of the far future, the millions-of-years old ancient alien race with super advanced tech uses a spear to stab you while travelling at Mach 1

When you absolutely have to delete enemy armoured vehicles, look no further than the Fire Prism - this is the original 2nd Edition kit with the massive metal weapons system. It has been a nightmare to keep attached even with pinning!

I'm really pleased with the gem effect; I basically just copied the 'Eavy Metal version with a change of colour palette

The whole thing was relatively easy to paint, it was mostly highlighting that took the time

The only issue with the Iyanden rune is that on a yellow background you can't really see the flame

My Dark Reapers had been missing an Exarch, but I did have a spare Dark Reaper mini and a ton of bits from various Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Corsair boxes - so I kitbashed an Exarch with shuriken cannon!

I'm genuinely really pleased with how the Exarch turned out; it looks like it's an actual sculpt rather than a kitbash

The suspensor on the shuriken cannon is quite fragile though

Painting the flames on the weapon casing was a lot of fun

Although in 4th Edition my army only has one big block of Guardian Defenders, I do have the models to have two smaller units. But I wanted to make a leader model to match the one that I have in the main block, so I used spare parts to build the leather waistcoat wearing Guardian in the front rank here

The pose is a bit odd, but that's an artefact of the various parts I had to use!

The shuriken catapult is a 1990s plastic one, the torso and head are from a Guardian Jetbike rider, the legs are from the 3rd Edition Guardian kit and the left arm is (I think) a 1990s part

The black leather coats look really nice against the yellow armour and blue helms, I think

The red plume distinguishes this unit as being distinct from the other one - it's small but it's a nice touch

At this point I had painted every Craftworld Eldar model I had, except for a repaired Jetbike, which is missing its handlebars and control panel piece. No idea how I'm going to replace that part. Anyway, I still had the Eldar bug quite badly, and there was a 40K Escalation League coming up, so I decided - as I noted at the start of this post - to get stuck into my Dark Eldar, the Poisoned Thorn Heart Kabal, and see if I could paint the whole army!

The Archon, Pnessia, Guldros, Runskurr and Ynrynn had already been painted. The others hadn't. I'm particularly pleased with the way Llohesyr came out

Back in 5th Edition the Court of the Archon could be quite large (as seen here) and necessitated a Raider for transport - nowadays not only is it just a Legends unit, but you can only take one of each kind of hanger-on, which I think is a real shame

It's such a fun unit, and really allows you to show off how bizarre and eclectic the Dark Eldar can be

Only two of these minis are stock without conversion of any kind - guess which ones

The Insightful Triad. Haemonculi allies of the Poison Thorned Heart Kabal

Yes, Uezzechin is wearing someone else's face as a mask

There's something deeply unsettling about the 3rd Edition Haemonculi minis which is missing from the more modern ones, I feel

They're a friendly bunch. Quite affable really. Just don't say yes to anything

No Archon worth their salt travels without an Incubi bodyguard. I adore the original designs, and repurposed an old Dracon to be the unit leader - Yzishyrr. The Incubi on the far left had already been painted up; the others were either painted new or - in the case of Yzishyrr - repainted

The bodysuits are painted to look like flayed skin, the armour a shiny black to intimidate, the face plates white to mimic death

I would like a couple more Incubi so I could have some weapons choices - maybe some with shredders, and some more with their glaives

The metal range of 3rd Edition Dark Eldar was good in a lot of ways; the Incubi are some of the best

Alakeri Tongue-Eater, Succubus, Wych-Queen. She rules the Circus of Sinful Delights and is possibly the most dangerous individual combatant in the whole orbit of the Kabal - Yzishyrr is her only real competitor for that title

The mini is of course a converted Lelith Hesperax. I really do prefer the current plastic incarnation of the Wyches in general, and it was a lot of fun coming up with fun hair dyes for them all

She wears champions' white, with golden armour. She carries an agoniser and a blast pistol

In the arena, of course, she doesn't use anything as crude as a blast pistol... but fighting prey?

In 3rd-5th Edition, which is the set of rules this army is really designed for, Kabalite Warriors can be as small as 5 models or as large as 20. That iteration of the army relies on three blocks of 20 Warriors - here is the more modern version, with three units of 10

The second squad is focussed on anti-infantry work, with splinter cannons and shredders

And the third squad goes back to anti-armour versatility, with a dark lance and blaster

The Warriors are something I'm really proud of in the army as a whole; I built them from a mix of 3rd Edition and 5th Edition Dark Eldar, with parts from 6th Edition Dark Elves, and they really do pop. For a basic unit they stand out nicely and have plenty of individuality. A lot of the more recent GW kits make it so much harder to kitbash and convert when you don't have much skill - loads of these required absolutely no cutting at all, just taking parts off sprues from 1998, 2000, and 2010 and cackling madly as they took shape!

Remember what I said about needing three units of 20? Well, that means I have a lot of Warriors...

 

...totalling three spare splinter cannons, one spare shredder, three spare dark lances, three spare blasters...

...and a total of 27 Warriors with splinter rifles. You can see here how much variety you can get with just the basic 3rd Edition sprues and a bit of posing; I think only one of these minis (fourth from left) uses parts from the 5th Edition range)

Of course you need Wyches, too! The Circus is split into three main gang-teams - Red, Green, and Blue - and champions wear white and don't belong to any one gang-team any more. This group comprises 3rd Edition metals, 5th Edition plastic and metal, and were great fun to paint up. The Wyches with special weapons like the shardnet and impaler are wearing coloured bodysuits and black armour, the inverse of the others. Note also that the Hekatrix champion wears white armour over a black bodysuit, unlike the Succubus Wych-Queen who has a white bodysuit and golden armour...

More weird and wonderful pieces! These are a Beastmaster with Warp Beasts (3rd/4th Edition), or a Beastmaster with Beasts (5th Edition). I loved painting these up and particularly enjoyed painting Dave the Warp Beast, the derpiest model I own by a long way. The winged jaguar is a Ral Partha model I think; everything else is GW. I converted the Beastmaster a little bit. He wears a black bodysuit with black armour because he's part of the "stage hands" who do all the grunt work that isn't done by slaves within the circus. Again, not part of a gang-team - just in the opposite direction to the champions

Wracks! These were so much fun to build. I remember sitting on the floor with a bunch of parts and gluing them together from all sorts of pieces. Some of these are willing participants, hoping to become apprentices to the Insightful Triad and maybe one day haemonculi themselves. Others are captives or bargaining chips, handed over by their seniors as payment or for future favours. And yes, that is a Space Marine in the front centre. Painting them was almost as much fun as building them - getting to do all sorts of colours and telling stories with paint schemes!

Scourges! Now, ideally, this unit would have four dark lances in it, but I ended up with three and a splinter cannon. It's not all bad - three dark lances is generally enough punch to wreck any given armoured vehicle, and the splinter cannon adds a nice bit of firepower to deter enemy infantry. I'm quite chuffed with the skull mask on the chap on the far front left. You may also note that the model at back centre is named, too, and that's because for some unknown reason GW has decided Scourges no longer come in units larger than five - so when I play 11th Edition, this becomes a unit with shardcarbines (at rear) and a unit with dark lances (at front)

The Talos! The pain engine of modern times - well, OK, of 5th Edition "vintage" I suppose - is a strange kit. I built it to look cool, and I like it. It was a bit of a struggle to paint, but I'm happy with how it turned out in the end

The vials of blood (or something stranger) were quick and easy to do, but the most effectively weird bit here is the kit itself - all exposed bone and tortured flesh. I think this was an Ogryn, once

Would you like some spine to go with that spine?

The Insightful Triad's mark is the triskele in a circle. If you see that, it belongs to them. Don't touch!

The Circus has a lot of Reavers, and they do a lot of racing. So each one has a uniquely coloured jetbike, so they can be identified with ease by the spectators! As with many things GW, the unit of 10 that they are meant to be in the 4th/5th edition iteration of the force is now not possible, so in 11th they're a unit of six and a unit of four

The Venom! This is the most commonly used personal transport of the Archon, nowadays, although back in 5th Edition this used to carry just the Incubi and the Archon and Court would be in a Raider

I went for a very ancient Greek look with eyes on all the skimmers - their prows put me in mind of Triremes and Biremes and the like, and it was a fun little detail

The decking here is gold-coated as are the venturi nozzles and the railings, denoting the power and authority of its riders. The gunner's dressed a little like a Wych mostly because the Archon (and Yzishyrr) likes the aesthetic

The Eldar Empire lives on, and the use of banners sprinkled throughout was meant to be a nod to that - the Kabal and their allies see themselves as the Eldar Empire, reduced in size, perhaps, but no less in importance. A sort of 40K Byzantium, in a way

This Raider has been painted since about 2009, but I'm including it here for completeness' sake

To be fair I did repaint the skin on the crew

Golden engine nacelles because it's the Archon's ride (one day I'll get the Vect Raider and use that instead)

Although it's usually occupied by Kabalite Warriors at the moment

This Raider is the one that the Wyches ride in, and the crew wear the black of the "stage-hands"

The Circus of Sinful Delights has its own rune, and the "sails" are in the colours of the champions and gang-teams. The actual Raider itself is purple because the Circus and the Kabal are basically the same entity; the Kabal funding and backing the Circus and the Circus fighting for and entertaining the Archon

Adding the little bird to the pilot was a last-minute decision and I'm really glad I did it. It's in the colours of the lesbian pride flag, and it looks great!

The massive ram-prow on this was the result of some quite significant hacking, and I removed a bunch of parts to make it look sleeker and different to the other Raider - each one of these skimmers is bespoke

The Wracks need transport too. The crew are encased in bodysuits and armour and perhaps you don't want to look underneath that...

Unlike the other Raiders, this one carries a Disintegrator cannon to use on infantry

The rear "wings" are where they are because they broke in transit years ago, and when I sat down to reassemble it prior to painting I happened to put one where they are now and thought it looked cool

Metallic purples to match with the purple scheme of the wider army, and to show that the Haemonculi are stranger than the rest

The Ravager is a pretty nasty anti-infantry skimmer - I have a lot of dark lances scattered throughout the larmy, so three disintegrators seemed like a good option. I'm pleased with the eyes and the (very subtle) black flames on the prow

I had, of course, assembled the entire thing before painting it, which made the sponson gunners... interesting to do the detail work on

But it turned out quite nicely, really, and the anti-boarding spikes look good too

The more modern Raider chassis is definitely an improvement over the older one, but it is a lot fiddlier to build and paint

No idea how well this'll do in action; I haven't fielded it yet - but I will!

And that - just about - gets us up to speed. Since then I have also painted some more Raptors Space Marines for my urban camouflage army:

While faffing around and working out what I had and what sort of army it turns into nowadays, I realised that I had almost a whole Company Heroes unit (that's what the Command Squad of old is now). The problem is that only certain types of character can be attached - and my Gravis armoured Captain won't do. So I had to make myself an alternate Captain, in basic Mk X powered armour

Her right pauldron has the company heraldry and a red skull, denoting both her rank as Captain and her membership of the Command echelon

The legs and torso are from an Assault Intercessor mini of the month, the right arm is a random Gravis Captain power fist attached to an upper arm of some description, and the left arm is from an Intercessor Sergeant (I think) with a 3rd Edition vintage plasma pistol

The tilting shield has her personal heraldry, and is from the old 3rd Edition multi-part Terminator set I think. The Raptor chapter badge is freehanded, and looks better in person... I promise!

As for those Company Heroes... I cut the helmet plume off a Captain model and made her a Sergeant, demoted one of my Lieutenants to a Company Champion, and kitbashed a Raptor with heavy bolter using a Chaos Legionnaire heavy bolter!

 

Belshunu's Raptor badge is also freehanded, and lacks the black disc of an officer in the same way as Ancient Marit's pauldron does. The heavy bolter hands went onto the Primaris arms with some superglue and blutac...

The juxtaposition of (quite effective) tigerstripe urban camo and things like a massive flag is a very 40K touch - even the ever-pragmatic Raptors can't quite resist the bling, sometimes

The Raptors may be Raven Guard successors, but Space Marines have a melanin gland that turns them black under increased UV, which is why a lot of my bare-headed Marines are dark skinned - and there is a certain joy in having an army of Astartes women who are black. It annoys the right people. Also, the Chaos heavy bolter makes a really good Relic Heavy Bolter once you cut away all the spikes

Not yet photographed are 12 Tau Fire Warriors and two Stealth Suits which I've painted up in the last few days, so I'll get those up for the next blog post. That at least gets us up to the present day, so what does the Painting Points tracker look like now?

Painting Points:
Today: 0
This Week: 14 (not shown)
2026: 255 (to be fair the skimmers were all 10 points each, but still!)