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.

Review: 'Fear to Tread' by James Swallow

Another great positive from going to GW events is the chance to pick up pre-release copies of Black Library titles. The period of the pre-release varies and, most of the time, I'm happy enough to wait until the titles are on Amazon, thus being able to afford almost twice as many books.

But I'm fairly addicted to the Horus Heresy series, particularly when a title features a chapter I collect and play with. So 'Fear to Tread' was a must-buy for me.

I finished it this afternoon and I can happily say its quite good. Not amazing, but a decent read overall.

For my money, Graham McNeill and Dan Abnett are the kings of the Heresy titles. Noone else seems to elevate their style and standard of writing quite so effortlessly when tackling the grand themes and great icons of the 30th millenium. But James Swallow comes close.

'Fear to Tread' is a Blood Angels novel as much as a HH title. It deals with a central theme of the army's codex and history - the Red Thirst/Black Rage, also sometimes known as 'the flaw'. A couple of brief flashbacks provide the setting - Horus is aware of the flaw, while few Blood Angels other than Sanguinius's inner circle are, and uses this knowledge to set a trap for the Angel and his sons. Part of this trap involves exposing the genetic weakness in the bloodiest of marines and using to destroy the chapter, or the Primarch, or perhaps both. Also lots of daemons. Gunplay ensues.

This is probably the maddest title in the series so far too. Glimpses of the real horror of the warp have been seen in 'Fulgrim' and 'The Mirror Crack'd', but 'Fear to Tread' leaves the reader in no doubt - allying with the warp is not just an alternate lifestyle choice for disaffected Astartes, its a deal with devils, with the emphasis on 'evil'. There's some pretty gruesome stuff in this book.

Sorry if this is a spoiler (it really shouldn't be), but Sanguinius at least does survive the trap set for him. But not without he and his chapter making some hard choices and some major sacrifices. While possibly beginning to answer one of the big questions that hangs over the Heresy series (clue: how does Nikaea tally with what we know of the 40k universe?), the end of 'Fear to Tread' leaves the reader desperate to know what happens next.

Some parts of the book did seem to drag a little bit - notably some of the exposition feels a little stilted and forced. But the action is well written and generally well paced.  There are a few incidental characters who don't seem to serve any real purpose, but then this occurs in quite a few HH books. Maybe the reasons for these characters inclusion will become clearer in future titles.

For fans of the Blood Angels then, this book is required reading. An unparallelled insight into the Primarch and the roots of the chapter we know and love today.

Its possibly less essential for general followers of the Heresy. I don't think there's much there that is truly pivotal in how the war turns out, although its quite revealing as to how Horus and Sanguinius feel about each other and does set the scene for that battle barge showdown nicely.

Next up on the pre-release pile: 'Path of the Outcast' by Gav Thorpe :)

Eldar Phoenix Bomber Paint Job - Now with Greyscale!

Finished greenstuffing all the gaps and holes in the bomber this morning. One of the tips I picked up at the GW open day was using the back of a knife to smooth down GS surfaces once they've dried for at least a day. Using this, I've done a passable job on all the surfaces and its time to paint.

I decided to use a greyscale base on the plane, so as to help with shading and highlighting later on. The idea of pre-shading and -highlighting is to apply a multi-tonal base. When you spray thin coats of other colours on top of this, the difference between the dark and light areas shows through.

First then, I sprayed the whole thing black.

Nothing special here, just some black primer.

Then I carefully sprayed a layer of Codex Grey. I took care to avoid the base of the slopes, and where pieces were joined together.

Then a layer of Fortress Grey. This was lighter than the previous one and I took care to put more on the edges of the wings and fuselage and raised areas, such as over the jet intakes.

Now its time for some colour. First a layer of Mechrite Red. This goes on fairly evenly - I'm counting on the greyscale to add depth and definition.

And (almost finally) some Blood Red. As with the greys, I emphasised the edges of surfaces and raised areas.

Thats it for the base colours. Now I need to use some liquid mask to mark out the spirals and probably to protect some of the gems and other details too. This is because this red recipe is really strongly pigmented and painting over it can be a right job to do. For example, painting the gold bits on my Blood Angels sometimes requires a layer of flat brown before the gold paints as the red just shines through otherwise. I want to do some blue gems and the detailing will likely be in gold too, so there's some work to do this evening...

Forge World Void Dragon Phoenix - How Not to Build a Model

This week I got to move to the next phase of my planned domination of the skies by the Space Elves - the Phoenix Bomber.

I was at Warhammer World last weekend, up at the tills, trying to decide which of the two Phoenix models to get. They cost the same. But there is the vanilla version and the Void Dragon edition. In theory, the latter is a special reworking of the original, with a few extra details and female pilots. I believe the supplied weapons vary too. I was a little concerned there might some blatant Dragon motifs on the thing, making it a little uncool for my Sun Blitz Brotherhood detachment. Turns out that stuff doesn't matter - the model is absolute crap any way.

It started off well. Here's a picture of what you get in the box/bag:

At this stage, the model is awesome

The most striking feature of the set is the flyer is pretty much a solid single cast. Its a hefty beast, and you just have to stick on the engine nozzles, two sets of fins, and the cockpit surrounds. All good, yes? No.

For a start, the main body is attached to a a chuck of resin by three solid pylons of material and a substantial amount of flash. Cutting through the flash ought to be simple enough. Except for when you have to get through a pretty solid chucnk of it first, causing your blade to then suddenly run through the inexplicably thin and cuttable wing section. Leaving you with this:

OK, maybe I'm just not a good modeler

Great! A chance to put the greenstuff techniques I learned at the Open Day to use! Grrr... This one I was prepared to put down to poor technique on my behalf when cutting. Lesson learned, I said, move on to the next bit and we'll fix that one later. Its hardly noticeable....

Then I got to grips with the dorsal fins. As far as I can tell, the Void Dragon versions have cutouts, making them more, I dunno, spacey or something. Problem is, they too are attached to a big lump of resin.

Starting to think I'm not the problem

Yeah, thats the upper surface the resin is attached to too. Not the bottom surface you glue to another surface, you know, like a surface you can't see. No, its the top surface. Good luck getting that lump off without ending up with something like this:

That is not my fault

Maybe expert modelers know some foolproof way to deal with issues like that. I would have gone with not casting it that way round to start with, but hey, what do I know. That I need to do more greenstuffing, thats what.

Well, I thought, at least the cockpit canopies look pretty simple. I'll just stick those down, paint them, then add the clear plastic after. Piece of cake. Except....

I knew Eldar were supposed to be tall, but...

Thats right - the pilots are too tall for the cockpits. You can get the canopy surrounds glued on ok (as long as you're prepared to spend a good bit of time figuring out which bits are excess resin and which bits are supposed to look that way, then cutting and filing to make them all sit nicely against each other), but it is then physically impossible to get the clear plastic tops on because the bloody heads are too high.

At this point I realised that my clumsy fingers and lack of experience weren't the problem. Its the actual model itself. And don't even try to tell me Forge World is for experienced modelers and will require some finishing work. I can handle filing don the broken surfaces that are on every single piece of this kit. I can reshape bits with warm water. I can fill bubbles with glue or greenstuff. All that is doable. But come on - at least sculpt pilots that are the right size for the bloody model!

After all that hassle then,  I am left with the choice tonight of waiting till Monday morning to ring FW and ask them 'are all the models this crap, or did I just get really unlucky?' or chopping the heads off the pilots, gluing on the plastics, and then just painting over it all.

I am, shall we say, a little disappointed.

And the bloody weapon pods broke off when I tried to glue the canopies on

Maybe the vanilla Phoenix is great. Maybe I got a bad cast. I don't know. For £67 though, it ought to fit.

OK, rant over. I've spent some time this evening with warm water and lots of greenstuff. Tomorrow I should be able to post some pics of the almost good version of it.

Games Workshop Studio Open Day

It was a bit of an odyssey getting there, but yesterday was the GW Studio Open Day. Well, it was initally advertised as such, but at some point that got changed to Warhammer 40,000 Open Day. Still, a good time was had by most.

Having arrived ridiculously early, I found this in the car park:

Naff colour scheme

Apparently the thing is street legal but is immobilized while on display. Yeah, I tweeted a bad joke about rolling a one. Anyway, if you plan on stealing it, bring your own battery.

The doors rolled open on time, at 10am, and in we all trooped.

The whole gaming hall of Warhammer World (or are we supposed to call it GW:HQ now?) had been put to use, with a fenced enclosure full of display cabinets, demo game tables, and, most importantly, Design Studio staff waiting to answer questions and tell us how they make the magic happen. Wait, wrong company? Well, tell us how they do that voodoo dey do do. Or something.

This was a great opportunity to learn from the masters, as it were, and I got a great little tutorial from Edgar Ramos on sculpting cloaks. There was a genuine 'Eureka!' moment, where I realised the trick, that little simple piece of magic that makes these things work, as well as a great look at how a master works, tips on tools to buy, and he even wrote down the name of a good book for further reading. Thanks, Edgar!

Nerds ahoy!

As well as hands on demos, there were also a lot scheduled demos and seminars. These were ticket only events - one had to choose which ones to attend before entering the hall - but, really, once you were in a seminar room the policy is pretty easy going. Its quite possible to stay in the same seat all day and just enjoy talk after talk.

So, what did I see and what did I learn?

First up was a talk on the latest edition of 40k, with Jervis Johnson, Matt Ward, and Jeremy Vettock. Matt was there to talk rules, Jeremy because he was in charge of background, and Jervis because, well, he's Jervis Johnson, man!

We started with some pre-written questions, supposedly based on FAQ's from the community. To be fair, some of these were fairly pointed - why have you added Allies and Fortifications to the rules, for example. The real answer is, of course, because we are a miniatures company that wants to sell more miniatures so we have broadened the amount of stuff you can play in your armies hoping you will therefore buy more of it. Questions such as this were met with fairly professional PR-style answers though - '40k fiction has often featured great alliances but the game has not. We wanted to bring that back to the game and also we want you to be able to play with a cool model if you see it and like it'. Both answers are true of course.

A couple of other titbits - Jervis said 'fantastic new buildings models coming into the range', in reference to the fortifications question. So yes, new buildings are on the way.


Matt Ward said random charge were in the game now as a response to the new wound allocation system. As you lose the closest models during shooting/overwatch, the designers wanted you to still have the chance of pulling off a charge afterwards.

He also said challenges in combat were designed to redress issues typified by the marine sergeant. If he has a power fist, he is essentially a 10-wound model who tends to hide at the back of the combat until the last second when he steps forward and wipes out the enemy squad. Alternately, if he is a Devastator sergeant, he dies first. With challenges, the idea is  you might have one model holding off a particularly powerful enemy, such as a daemon prince, until his squad could finish off the rest and come to his aid. 


The issue of not being able to charge after arriving from reserves was also tackled. The guys said they wanted to remove 'mugging' from the game. The idea of players being able to pull off some hammer-smash, wipeout manouevre, without their opponent being able to react or resist in any way, was unpopular with the designers. Genestealers outflanking and then assaulting you to death was mentioned (although Jervis pointed out to Matt Ward that could still happen) but, more specifically, Vanguard Veterans and Heroic Intervention was singled out as a tactic that will be removed from the game in future.


Jervis also said future codexes will rely less on codex-specific special rules and abilities and more on the core rulebook's USRs. The idea is that by making the core rules more robust, there will be less possibilities of imbalance in future releases. I'm not sure how well this sits with Matt Ward, being infamous as he is for writing codexes with game-shattering rules within. But apparently thats the way we're going.


After that talk I got to go to a sculpting demo with Martin Footit (very good), one on painting Space Marine chapter markings on shoulder pads with Simon Adams (not so good), and a further demo of painting and weathering an Ork Bomma with Stuart Williamson of Forge World (very very good). 


After that it was pretty much time to go. Despite taking place in a fairly small venue, its still a lot to take in and can be quite tiring. 

Its a bomma! Its a bomma, yeah, yeah, yeah!

It is still very inspiring though. Seeing dozens of fellow hobbyists, meeting and watching some of the best painters and modelers in the world and hearing from some of the creators who made all this stuff happened in the first place is very inspiring. These events make me believe in 40k and want to build my own little part of its universe. 


GW does well to put these kind of events together. Frankly, it makes you forget all the awful marketing decisions, all the price rises, and the insulting memos from senior staff and just love the hobby. It could be better though.


Apart from Jervis, none of the GW staff seemed comfortable with or happy to be talking to the public. In the first talk, for example, all three speakers made a big deal out of not wanting to handle the microphone or handle the questions being asked. This is a big deal - why have a public-facing, PR event like this if you are going to put people in front of the public who make it clear they don't want to be there? 

Building this is easy. Talking to people about it, however...

Its a shame in two ways. Firstly, for the guys giving the talks/demonstrations. These guys could be, should be, like rock stars. You're in a room with a hundred or more people who have paid to come and see you because you are bloody good at your job. Should this not be something you enjoy and get a kick out of? Shouldn't it be fun, talking to fans and sharing your knowledge and expertise? Secondly, the fans, the punters, paid to see their idols/role models. Shouldn't we fell welcome and wanted? Shouldn't we feel these guys are approachable, warm, happy to be there? Its not nice to pay for an event and see people who make it obvious they would rather be at home in front of the TV.


Its true that public speaking is a major fear for a lot of people. But it is also true most of these people could be coached and trained to get past that fear and actually enjoy the experience. I know because I married a Vocal Coach. Seb Perbet mentioned he had recently attended a four-day course on anatomy and physiology, paid for by GW, just so he could be a better sculptor. If meeting the public is going to be part of the job, shouldn't GW stump up for some speaking training too?


Still, it was a great day out. You needed to go to the talks to make the day complete - the demo area in the gaming hall is not that big - and it helps that there is a great bar on hand too. But it was still an excellent opportunity to to geek-out, learn from the best, and go home with more toys to play with and more ideas to make them great.


Thanks, GW :)