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

So, I have a plan.

Build an Eldar army from scrap/spare/found/cheap bits.  I'll build the ramshackle nature of the final thing into its own fluff: scattered orphans of a dozen destroyed worlds, joined together under the command of a new, young and frighteningly powerful farseer (Eldrad with a new name, natch) - you get the idea.

So far, I have:

• 10 guardians.  I've got some spare Wraithlord weapons and intend to have them all magnetised so I can swap them in and out. I'm building a weapon platform for the guardian squad.
• 1 warlock to hand around with the guardians casting embolden if necessary. Half built from odd bits of bodies.
• 5 striking scorpions with exarch including home-made biting blade.  The blade is a bit bulky looking, but very spiky.  I quite like it, but will have to see how it looks painted. 
• 1 Wraithlord.  It's the head/body/legs of an old Eldar dreadnought (something I wanted since I was a kid) with modern wraithlord arms and weapons.  I may see if I can get hold of some of the epic titans for parts or other bits.  I'm pleased with how this is going.
• 7 rangers with sniper rifles.  These are actually made from wingless metal swooping hawks.  I chopped off the end of the guns and built long sniper rifle-like bits for them from thin aluminium and copper pipe.  I'm quite pleased with how these look so far. I intend to make cloaks for them if I can.  I was thinking about building a light framework of clear plastic (from packaging)  and draping thin material over it and then painting it with thin PVA.  I need to experiment.
• Eldrad character.  Pretty much a complete metal model that just needs something doing to the staff.

This is all just what I can knock together with the odd piles of stuff I have from ebay and the rare individual bargain to be found there.

I'm aiming to start with around a 1000 point list.  The only thing I haven't really got a start on but want for the list is a small squad of warp spiders for general harassment while the wraithlord and rangers shoot stuff and the striking scorpions fight things that get too close to the guardians.   

If the list gets bigger, I really want a squad of 10 wraithguard so that they're troops and add their own warlock so they don't go blind randomly. I love the idea of wraithguard troops.  I might also like to increase the ranger and guardian squad size.

Photos will be coming soon...