Playing around with Jetbikes, part 2

My brother bought me a piece of art from a local graffiti artist a while back, and it has to be the most badass piece of art, ever. Therefore, I decided to make a tribute to the piece in my Eldar army. Maybe I'll attempt to carry the theme over to other parts of the army, too. We'll see...

Playing around with Jetbikes

So I was browsing druchii.net and I came across some work that bloopy was showing off in the painting forum. He had painted faces onto the hoods( is that the right term?) of his jetbikes, and one of the faces in particular appealed to me greatly. So, after that shot of inspiration, I set about to copy the face onto one of my own jetbikes.

Here is the result:




I like the looks of it, and I think I could easily repeat this two or three more times to flush out a squad of Shining Spears.

I'm going to need to buy some more jetbikes... Especially if I decide to make a mounted Seer Council.

Productivity

Surprisingly, I've been pretty productive on the hobby front as of late. These past few days have been spent watching the Olympics and pre-season football all while filing mould lines, gluing legs to torsos, and priming Eldar. Usually I live vicariously through others while reading their army blogs, and manage to avoid working on my own armies. This was not the case this weekend.

All in all, here's what I completed:

Assembled - 12 Storm Guardians, 10 Harlequins, 6 Warlocks, 1 Farseer
Primed - 12 Storm Guardians, 5 Warlocks, 1 Farseer

I also purchased some rod to create flying bases for my Jetbikes, Swooping Hawks, and Heavy and Support Weapon Platforms. I found a drill bit size that works perfectly, and now just need a device that can cut the rod (I ruined my clippers trying them on it). Using this rod will allow me to make use of all the cool resin bases I ordered specifically for this army.

The only downside to the work I did over the weekend is that it is going to make moving (which I am doing near the end of the month) just that much more difficult, as the models are no longer able to fit in their nice flat storage organizers. Oh well, maybe I just need to hurry up and make my new army transport/storage boxes similar to the one below:



These have a metal bottom that allows your magnetized bases to stay put while being stored away. I'm planning on getting a few square bins that I will do something similar to--which will also decrease the amount of dust that accumulates on the models when they sit out.

Here's to hoping that this type of productivity continues!

Storm Guardians

I just finished assembling a unit of Storm Guardians for my Eldar Bards of Twilight army. I used 7 resin bases, and 5 regular bases. Hopefully this will allow the army to look nifty without falling prey to the "everyone found a rock to stand on" syndrome.



I modeled this to look like the Tyranid Brood Lord, where it is letting out a great howl (or hiss/whine/growl... whatever).



This fellow looks like he is leaping into combat.

The Bards of Twilight... The Beginning

I've already played one game with them, so now it is time to get them all painted! Here's the first of what is bound to be a bunch of guardians painted up as the Bards of Twilight.





Please note that these are most definitely WIP models, and will have a lot more attention given to them. Well, the guardians themselves will stay very basic, but I will add some diamonds in somehow to reference the Harlequin theme.

1st 40K Game... EVER!!

I just played my first game of Warhammer 40,000! Alex and I had agreed upon a trade via Ordo Fanaticus, and decided to play a game when we met to swap plastic instead of just, well... swapping plastic. It was pretty cool of him to take the time to teach me how to play. We played an Eldar vs. Eldar game at 1000 points. Here're the armylists from what I can remember:

Alex:
HQ - Farseer on Jetbike w/Singing Spear and Doom
Core - Jetbike Squad (4) + Warlock on Jetbike with Singing Spear
Core - Dire Avengers (10) w/ Bladestorm Exarch in Wave Serpent
Elite - Striking Scorpions (8?) w/ Scorpion Claw Exarch
Elite - Fire Dragons (6)
Heavy - Falcon w/ all the goodies (Fire Dragons rode in here)

Me:
HQ - Avatar
Core - Jetbike Squad (3) w/ Shuriken Cannon x1
Core - Jetbike Squad (3) + Warlock w/ Singing Spear on Jetbike with Conceal
Core - Guardians (10) w/ Starcannon
Core - Guardians (10) w/ Scatter Laser
Elite - Harlequins (5) w/ Shadowseer and 3x Harlequin Kisses
Fast Attack - Vyper Squadron (2) with dual Shuriken Cannons each
Fast Attack - Swooping Hawks (5) w/ Exarch w/ Skyleap and Intercept
Heavy - Vibro Cannon Support Weapon Platform

We played "Cleanse," so the way to win the game was to secure table quarters. I had an advantage because I had more units and more mobile units. However, it was my first game every playing, and I made a lot of mistakes... but I still managed a draw because we each had two quarters each. If we had been doing victory points, I would have been decimated, because all I had left was my Avatar and one squad of Guardians.

Here are some things I learned throughout the game:

1. YOU DON'T NEED TO BE IN COMBAT EVERY CHANCE YOU GET! I misused my Jetbike squads and they got killed--all because I was trying to get them to shoot at something when I really didn't need to. I should have used them to deny table quarters.

2. Harlequins need to be bigger than units of 5. I need to take a larger squad of these baddies so that they can take some casualties but still hit like a ton of bricks in combat. I hit like a water balloon when I finally got into combat.

3. Swooping Hawks are freakin' rad! I love bouncing in and out of play dropping grenades. Talk about fun!

4. Formulate a plan and then stick with it. I had my Avatar walking around in circles for the first four turns of the game because I kept changing my mind with what I wanted to do with him. Idiot...

5. Vypers with dual Shuriken Cannons are awesome! Must fit two more into my army.

I think I want to play defensive with fast harassment units. I will use the Harlies as a counter-attack unit to wipe out anything that comes for my Guardians/Avatar. I'll let the Vypers, Jetbikes, and Hawks run around doing their thing. Sounds like a fun way to play!

Pretty much I'm just ecstatic to have actually gone out and played a game. Hopefully I will go and play more games in the future.

The State of the Eldar

[Not shown in image are NIB Rangers, Harlequins, and Guardians]

That's Project: Eldar. It is in no way a legal army (yet), but it is what I have at my disposal. Putting it all out on the table shows what a mass of stuff I do have. I'm pretty proud of it all, even though it is quite overwhelming. I'm going with a heavy Guardian theme, as well as making use of Harlies and Swooping Hawks. I'm not sure I will actually use the Scorpions or the Reapers, but I have 'em just in case. I'm contemplating running a tank-busting unit of Harlies armed with fusion pistols, but we'll see if that is just plain stupid or not (must ask WarSeer).

The basis of the army is the Bards of Twilight, those who know how the Phoenix Kings die in the final battle of the Eldar. The Harlequins are a must, as they are the true bards of the Eldar race. They are the storytellers who tell of The Fall, so I figure they must be tied into the Bards of Twilight somehow. I want a guardian heavy force because it pays homage to the old Ulthwe army list, plus it just seems right. I don't know why the Bards of Twilight would have a bunch of Elite Path warriors running around with them.

So yeah, here it is right now. We'll see what happens in the future.

Things I've Been Working On...

So I've gotten myself sidetracked--go figure. I'm now looking more and more at my Eldar. I even went as far as to purchase some new--as in new in a box from a store--models (using money earned from selling stuff on eBay) for the Eldar army I'm creating. I find it funny that I once had bazillions of Eldar miniatures, then decided to sell most of them, and now want a lot of them back. Wierd... Anyway, I ordered all this online, so I don't have it in my possession yet, but I will be getting some new Rangers, the brand new Harlequins, and another War Walker. "Another" because I got one in a trade--along with some Swooping Hawks and a partial Autorch--on Bartertown. So I'm going to have a nifty little quick-strike army. I'll post a list of what all I'm going to use in the army at a later time (when I can remember). But here's a picture of the WIP Autorch that I might not even include in the army: