Final Gallery - Sun Blitz Brotherhood Eldar Corsairs

Alright, these boys are about as done as I want them to be. I could add a few more little details here and there - glyphs on the helmets, that sort of thing - but I really don't want to paint them any more. Time to move on to something else. So here they are:

 Its a ten man squad, complete with a missile launcher and a shuriken cannon. I envisage them holding an objective in my deployment zone and taking shots at anything that comes too close.

The heavy weapons are both scratch-built from several spare parts from tank kits. This guy did have a really cool looking forehand grip - that got lost somewhere during transportation ><

 I started building the missile launcher before I realised the hand holding the handle was the left one. That meant I had to find a right hand that didn't have a weapon, leaving this Corsair looking as if he is suggesting a new direction the squad should attack.

The squad leader is carrying a shuriken pistol and power sword. Just a little bite in case of being assaulted. Not that Str 3 is likely to worry too many enemies...

The bases were all painted with GW's Stirland Mud textured paint with a few pieces of slate and small pebbles mixed in for variety. These additional parts were painted Bestial Brown before I dry-brushed the whole thing with Kommando Khaki and Bleached Bone. The addition of a few tufts of reedy grass and some orange rubber foliage helps break up the bases and tie them in to my flyer bases.

Right, I'm off on holiday now - see you in a week or so.

Eldar Corsairs

I have been posting a lot of photos and text about my Corsair flyers. The sad truth of it though, is that you have to field at least one unit of Corsairs in a legal army. Sad because I hate painting Eldar.

Not their tanks or planes. Just the little individual models. Maybe its the quality of sculpts (unlikely), amaybe its a weakness in my painting skills (most probable). But while I can paint Terminators and Space Marines till the cows come home, Eldar armour is a pain the bum. But still, needs must...

So here are my pretty much finished Sun Blitz Brotherhood Eldar Corsairs. They're not much to look at - I have had to adopt a 'tabletop standard' philosophy towards them in order to just get them done so I can move onto something more fun again.

 

I hope they're more fun to play than they were to paint

 Its probably worth saying a few things about the Forge World Eldar Corsairs upgrade kit though.

For your money, you get 10 Corsair las-blasters, 10 Corsair heads, 10 Corsair backpacks, and 20 Corsair vanes to stick on them. For the Felarch you have the option of a shuriken pistol or fusion pistol to complement his power sword.

How the parts come in the bag

The las-blasters will require their handles to be chopped off for you to add them to the arms that come with the Guardians box ( from which you will of course need to remove the shuriken guns). The backpacks stick straight onto the Guardian bodies and the vanes are somewhat poseable, having ball and socket joints to fit into.

Orientation of the backpack and vanes

The vanes are the most distinctive parts of the kit and are what will really draw people's attention when you field the models. The helmets and las-blasters though are both nice sculpts though and do a nice job of differentiating these wayward space elves from their worldship-bound cousins.

Some nice options for the Felarch

 Apart from the modification necessary to use the guns, the kit is very easy to use and put together. Some of the guns and vanes in my kit were a little bent but they are so thin they could be reset with hot tap water. No miscasts or bubbles that I could see.

Are they worth the money though? Well, its horses for courses, really, isn't it? You could get away with painting up some standard Guardians in your Corsair fleet of choice's colours, I'm sure. But, if you really want your pirates to be clearly different, this kit is great, particularly if you are planning on fielding them alongside Codex Eldar. Its not cheap, but nothing Forge World is. I would have preferred the guns to have come without handles to eliminate one stage of the upgrade process, but its not a deal breaker by any means. Generally 'ok' for value then.

I did, however, draw the line at the special weapons kit Forge World offer. You get one of each type of heavy weapon Corsairs can carry but for me, this would just leave two weapons on the sprue, never to be used. If the kit came with two of each type and didn't cost £4 per weapon I might have sprung for it. As it was, I decided to kit-bash a missile launcher and shuriken cannon. Each weapon consists of four or more pieces stuck together and are reasonable, if slightly oversized, simulacrums of the 'official' parts. And a lot better value for money.

Just the bases and a power sword to do then, and I can get on with painting something a bit more fun :)

Eldar Corsairs Nightwing Gallery

I think I've got my Sun Blitz Nightwing where I want it. I used some mixed herbs to add some leaf litter around the base and finished off the cockpit canopy and engine blocks this morning. I wonder if Battlefoam do a tray that will fit it alongside my Phoenix....

I buffed the varnish a little, but its barely noticeable

Looks pretty mean from this angle :)

Side view

Top view

This is what happens if you use a rush tip to move the water effects around

Mixed herbs make pretty good and easy to apply leaf litter

Finishing Touches - Eldar Sun Blitz Phoenix

Its been a busy few days, what with having two kids to wrangle and all, but I've nearly finished the paint job on my Phoenix.

Basic colours

Having finished the main body, hihlighted the edges with Bubonic Brown and a tiny edge of Sunburst Yellow, I did a pretty basic job on the pilots and glued on the canopy. Most of the gems are blue as a contrast to the flaming yellow of the fuselage, with just a couple of orange ones for variety.

With added highlights

Something was missing though. My Nightwing fighter has a nice Sun Blitz crescent (not a spiral, as I had previously erroneously described it) but it was not so easy to get this painted onto the bomber.

I tried the liquid mask method I used on the fighter, but it just didn't look as cool as I wanted it to when I pulled off the frisk. Actually it looked awful. So bad I had to respray the whole thing :(

The problem is the shape of the plane. It doesn't have a lot of large flat areas for painting such details on. It has a tiny strip of wing on each side, connected to the jet sections by a very thin strip, then the dorsal surface is, well cluttered and there are the two fins to get in the way too. I just couldn't see a way to paint on the crescent, or even crescents, without it just looking like a weird red stripe.

So, a couple of nights to think it over were necessary.

I had my eureka moment this morning. I had thought I was going to go with a sort of sunrayish motif, using the two panel/instrument pods as the centres. Their location was still a little problematic though and I couldn't figure out how to do it, using a freehand brush, and get the lines to look straight over a curved surface. I was dreading putting the brush down to find I had just painted, again, some weird stripes.


But then it hit me - the Phoenix! It is, of course, a legendary bird of flame, not just a pretty word the Eldar (the Imperium?) used to denote this flying beast. So, perhaps I could freehand a flame motif on the wing.

A quick bit of research (google) gave me this image:

I also found some other, less savoury pictures

I then practiced drawing those organic, naturally curving and authentic flames/feathers in a notebook (another good tip for freehand painting - practice it with a pencil first) before committing paint to model.

Too much?

 I used thinned Mechrite Red, followed up by a thin layer of Blood Red. Then I went too far, trying to add realistic flame effects, with lines of Gold Yellow, Blazing Orange, and Sunburst Yellow. In the flesh, as it were, the flames looked ok. Only ok. Part of the problem was I'm not very good, that is, haven't practised, at drawing flames. The other part was the yellows and orange were too close to the plane's base colour, giving a sort of diluted effect to what is supposed to be a strong contrast colour.

Not a complete disaster though as I was able to paint back over the flames with Mechrite and Blood Reds. I then added a thin highlight or Blazing Orange and thin shade line of Dark Flesh to each flame. It looks pretty good, albeit not as smooth a finish as it should be. 

I will probably add some more layers of Purity Seal on top and may even polish this, so I don't think the unevenness of the paint will be too apparent in the end. I will also do some better quality shots too as the paint job is, in places, better than these pictures show.