Eldar: The beginning

Ok, I love Elves. I just need to get that out the way. Sue me for it later if you want.

By the way, this is the first google image for
searching 'elf' that isn't Will Ferrel...

And that definitely doesn't affect my decision at all...

I often wondered what 40k army I'd play if I were to do a Xenos force (or at least a non-marine one). Now I know the answer.

Eldar.

I love Elves, what can I say?

So what swung me? Aside from elvish-ness. Well, it's mostly Yriel. 

This guy...

He ticks all of my boxes really. I like to create my own characters rather than use the Special Characters in codices (usually) but this guy is:

1. An Elf (at some point I'm going to stop using this reason. Maybe)
2. A pirate
3. An Anti-hero (and to top that one off, a doomed anti-hero.)
4. Stabby

Ok, that last one is a poor reason, but I'm more a fan of hack and slash characters than sit back and shoot ones. For glory! For the Eldar!

So I finally gave in and decided to field and Yriel led pirate force, and to this end I'm going to be moving towards building a hybrid Eldar list (not footsloggers! Culture shock!). I felt that though he's abandoned being a pirate to lead Iyanden, I'd prefer to do a pirate list than the full wraith list Iyanden leads to (and I'm not fully sold on the bright yellow paint scheme yet). Rest assured, there will be wraiths there still though. Wraiths are cool.

So I've started my collection with the pirate captain himself, and as he's such a beautiful figure, I'm trying to brush up my painting (see what I did there?) to do him justice. Here's a quick log of how he's coming along. I apologise for the poor picture quality, I have a very bog standard camera.

 So here's two shots of the first stage. I decided to stick to a similar paint scheme to the standard GW one, the black armour's pretty cool. I was going to cut off the flags (I may still do) as I didn't think a lithe, eldar pirate would go to battle with two huge poles on his back, but they look pretty good in the flesh (in the resin?) and it does make him bigger and therefore more impressive.

These next three are of the second stage of his painting.The armour has gone from the general black ink wash I gave it to be highlighted with codex grey (with a slight space wolves grey drybrush) on the raised plates of his armour with a bleached bone edge highlight and skull white extreme highlight. I'm very pleased with how well this has emphasised his armour and added colour depth. He also has a devlan mud and asurmen blue wash to dirty it up to reflect his pirate nature and give it an unearthly glow respectively. His cloak is pretty simple as it's regal blue with an enchanted blue highlight. I'm not quite finished with this yet, I might also do the inside lining in red instead of bleached bone.

The second thing I got to accompany him is perhaps my favourite thing ever.

Harlequins.

Space elf clowns. What a concept!

Now these have made me question my entire marine collecting life! They are so beautifully graceful, lithe, deadly, dainty, dynamic I could go on and on and on...

And on.

They are some of the most beautiful figures I've ever seen. And I'm going to say now that all these Eldar are Finecast and I've had no problems with them. They were so easy to clean off the sprue and glue together (unlike metal). So don't believe all the hate about it.

Anyway, I just am so excited to paint them and I really want to paint them to the best of my ability. I got some Garlic mesh to try to pin around them to help me with the checkered patterns but it was a pain to get to stay still, therefore I just took out my trusted pencil and freehanded a checker pattern myself.

The results so far, again I'm sorry about the quality making it hard to see. I'm doing the best with the tech I have available. I will say it's worked pretty well (honest) so I guess the real test will be painting within the checks but so far I'm pleased with them.

I am never looking back from Harlequins.

Ever.

They will be in all my lists.

So until next time folks,

Send in the clowns!