A sudden surge of progress

I finished work a few days ago for Christmas and I've been hobbying like mad.

I've built another wraithlord, complete with another full set of magnetised weapon options.  This one's jogging into battle.

Here's the second one with the arms of the first:

 And here's the first one, with the arms from the second:

The plastic arms from wraithlord 1 are on here for now because they can be posed better than the weighty metal ones, but they're all fully interchangeable. I've loved these metal Eldar dreads since I was a kid. I have more bits of them in my bitsbox, so I might get around to another at some point.

I wasn't sure how to basecoat all of the weapons easily since they're all small and I didn't want to have to do them in two halves, so I build a little rack with non-ferrous wire and then added a couple of lines of steel wire for them to stick to.

I also finally basecoated a section of fence we've had built for ages and some resin crates.

I made some objective markers from air-drying clay and Wilkinson Christmas decorations (£2 well spent).  They need painting, but I like how they look so far.

And I'm finally ready to start paining my Swooping Hawks.  I spent a long time posing these guys to make each one as different as possible with the small number of poses available, so a squad of 10 doesn't look to repetitious. They're the metal ones everyone seems to want to get rid of. I added wings made from trimmed "wing pendants" bought for a couple of quid on e-bay. I've basecoated them with Army Painter Crystal Blue, ready for shading and detailing.

And finally, I've been painting the sniper model from Deadzone.  Santa is bringing me the prerelease box for Christmas, but I picked this model up so I had something to paint in the meantime.

Now I think about it, I really don't know why I thought I was short on things needing to be done. Everything in this post is half done and needs work.  I also have built the last of the young Nephilim from the Lilith Malifaux starter box I bought ages ago, basecoated and washed another squad of Eldar Guardians, picked up a whole bunch of jetbikes that need stripping, fixing, converting and painting, started working on two Eldar heavy weapon platforms using a mix of the too-small metal weapon platform bases with over-sized mega weapons from wraithknights (I think, I have lots of random bits).

Here's the tray of stuff needing a basecoat:

I made a couple of 2'x2' boards which have been worked on since the photo below, but are still very much unfinished, too.

I'm also scratch-building a Deff Dread for my son's Ork army. I'm probably going to burn out and go back to writing code instead soon, but hopefully I can actually call some of these complete before then.  

ScrapDar progress

My big Eldar-army-from-scrap scheme is starting well.  I've completed a small unit of striking scorpions and a mixed metal/plastic wraithlord.  Now I want rangers.

The thing is, I really don't like Eldar heads and the ranger models have bare heads (and knee-high leather boots, for some eason: have a look).  I like Eldar helmets, though.  So, I decided to build something a bit different rather than trying to find rangers on ebay.

Nobody likes swooping hawks, it sees.  You can get them quite cheap.  I got some metal hawks for a couple of quid. I don't want the wings, but the poses are great and really flowing.  I've bent legs and reposed them, sometimes adding something they're leaning on - like catalogue models, maybe. 

I then snipped of the barrels of their guns and made them into sniper rifles with nice long barrels.  I'm quite proud of those guns.  I drilled into the stock and put in a pin.  Then I put the pin into the copper tube and glued it.  The aluminium tube was then cut to make the thicker parts of the barrel.  

And I did it all with a mostly blunt razor saw.  I need to find some blades.

Next I wanted to make them look like sneaky snipers.  So I made them fabulous capes.  I mean, camouflage cloaks.  This was quite fun. I squashed some air-drying clay into mesh material to make sheets of flexible clay that stayed whole and bent up like material when compressed.  The mesh was once wrapped around some flowers from Tesco.  I also pressed some designs into the bottoms of some of the cloaks.

I then shaped this around the model to look like it was draped around them or concealment (like this guy creeping up steps) or flying out behind them as they run  (the ones leaning forward in a dash, thanks to their previous existence as Swooping Hawks).

Cotton to hold everything in place while it dries.

 Here's another.  I curled the bottom up on this one later and made it look like it was caught in the wind. Like a lethal Marilyn Monroe,

And here they are, looking all around for threats and showing of their cloaks.  I resisted the urge to add a cloak to all of them.  It was so fun to do, but I don't want a squad of people pretending to be superman.

I'm priming them for painting right now.  I'm going to go for a grey/blue/black camouflag-ish colouring, I think.

Hill progress

I've been quiet for a while due to the volume of work lately, but although I haven't been posting, I have made some progress on the hobby.

First, the poundland hill.  We got some small rocks on, filled in with some decorative rocks (99p for a big jar full of silver rocks) and flock to texture the top surfaces.

When the glue was dry, I doused it with GW's Purity Seal to keep all the bits in place.  Well, it hasn't been much good for anything else yet, so I was glad to actually get some out of the can. And it needs it, too, because there's everything from small rocks to ground coffee on this thing.

Next, I sprayed it all black and white.  The black bits will just be washed and dry-brushed, but the white bits will be painted grass green.

Poundland finds

OK, so the craft knife that snapped was not a good purchase.  However, these  kneeling pads are quite good.

The kids and I have been making them into a suitable hill for the gaming table.

The pattern will be smothered by poundland grout, which should also make the shape a little less regular.