Ben's Eldar - OWAC VII - Rank and File Month 2

A high-pitched keening wail filled the air as the Howling Banshees performed the Dance of Skulls near their dropship.  Karhedron watched as the women sparred in slow motion with invisible foes, each movement part of some greater intricate pattern, as if the whole unit were one organism sharing a single mind.

I decided at the start of painting this army to give all the units yellow helmets, and try to stick to overall colours of blue and green, yellow and white - trying to keep squads individually bright, but also coherent overall.  Because of that, the theme this month is Aspect Warriors that I struggled to decide how to paint!  I wanted to incorporate some of each Aspect's traditional colours, and keep a nice contrast between the main colours, but generally avoid using red and black (which I've used a lot on my other 40K armies).  

For the Howling Banshees, I think the contrast between dark blue and bone works.  On the other hand, Jain Zar has a nice ghostly appearance, but unfortunately doesn't stand out so well - perhaps I should have incorporated some black or another dark colour to add variety.

With the Warp Spiders, I tried a couple of different things, and was still not satisfied with the first pictures I took. I eventually decided the glowing parts of the weapons would have to be red, repainted them, and am a bit happier.

The second theme, for this month's bonus models, is assembling units out of bits and pieces of second-hand lots of miniatures.  I completed a Guardian Squad, three of which (the ones on the right) I had partly painted before.  One of the Guardians was the very first test figure I painted, which I finished off with a plastic Dark Eldar banner - I gave up on finding the original metal banner pole for a reasonable price.  The five on the left were fresh for this challenge, completed after picking up the necessary plastic Shuriken Rifles for the metal body/plastic arm models in a bag of random Eldar bits.  The mixture of armour patterns and guns they've ended up with actually, I think, gives them a thematic feel of a citizen militia fighting with personal, handed-down equipment.  

Having completed the Guardians, I used a Shuriken Cannon left over from a broken Vyper to arm the Weapons platform, and that painted up really quickly.  Then I treated myself to painting a lovely Warlock model to round things out.

Lastly, having given up on finding missile launchers to accompany the Dark Reaper bodies, I decided to convert them into a custom Aspect to paint next month.  I trimmed off their range finders, and armed them with flamers and power fists.  The pose repeated a few times becomes a bit awkward, but otherwise I'm happy.

0-1 SUN BASILISK SQUADS ......................... 45 points per model

Sun Basilisks shrines are found only on a small number of Craftworlds.  Terrifying when encountered in tunnels or ship corridors, they are heavily-armoured close-range fighters, with power fists and guns that can be fired as either flamers or hand flamers.

Troop Type     M   WS  BS   S    T    W    I    A   Ld
Sun Basilisks   4     4     4     3     3     1     4    1    9 

SQUAD          A squad consists of between 3 and 7 models

WEAPONS    Flamer, Hand Flamer, Power fist.

ARMOUR      Basilisk Aspect Armour (3+ save)

Total painted this month: 772 pts

Jain Zar – 187 pts
4 Howling Banshees – 81 pts
Exarch, Banshee Mask, Power Sword, Laspistol – 69 pts

Exarch, Warp Spider Jump Generator, 2 Death Spinners – 90 pts
4 Warp Spiders – 164 pts

5 Guardians, Shuriken Catapults – 70 pts (plus 3 part-painted already)

3 Warlocks, Witch Blade – 66 pts
Shuriken Cannon on Anti-Grav Platform – 45 pts (just realised it's not a legal 2nd ed. unit, but 10 pts less than a Heavy Plasma Gun based on Vyper Jetbike costings seems ok)