ZeroTwentythree's Eldar Pirates - Intro Post

 ZeroTwentyree's Eldar Pirates

(the sequel)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Wait. That's not it. I start over.

In 2021 I went sci-fi for the Old World Army Challenge IV before returning to fantasy for the next two years and then sitting out last year's Challenge. Now I return to the +/-41st century in 2025!

My OWAC4 project was a small RT era Eldar Pirate force, the Crew of the Cold September. It was based on the Eldrich Raiders list from Chapter Approved: Book of the Astronomican and a few White Dwarf articles that expanded that list. A few liberties taken, as explained in my entries from that project, due to the half-baked nature of those old lists.

This year I will expand the crew. There will be additional rank & file infantry, but quite a bit more support -- both troops and equipment -- this time. Strictly speaking I will mostly be sticking with RT era figures, some of them from the later period when the Craftworld Eldar list first came out in WD (like the scouts). And some weird stuff. There is a method to my madness. Or a madness to my method. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Trust me...

The Plan*

2	Dragon Squads	188	376
1	Venom Squads	178	178
2	Scout Squads	67.5	135
1	Zoat Terror Squad	354	354
2	D-Cannons & Crew	96	192
1	Heavy Plasma Gun & Crew	106	106
1	Banshee Dreadnought	268	268
1	War Cry Dreadnought	293	293
1	War Walker	349	349
2	Fishdudes	???	???
2	Probati (Officers/Champions)	25	50
1	Malefactor (Psychic Lieutenant/Minor Hero)	176	176
1	Farseer (A Missionary/Major Hero)	426.5	426.5
	*** redacted ***		???
	*** redacted ***		???
	*** redacted ***		???
	TOTAL		2903.5+

The Pics of the Plan

As you can see, there are some interesting surprises in store! Boy, that *** redacted *** could be difficult, but I think I can pull it off. Wish me luck!

* Based on past years, The Plan is more like guidelines than what you'd call actual rules.

Björn Grendel's Unberogenes

 

Some concept models...

Sigmar, leading His tribe in battle.

 So here we are. My First OWAC. I wanted to join since the First time I heard of it, a couple of years ago, so I took courage to ask and FINALLY i'm here... Before digging in the project itself, a Little something about myself: Im a 40 y.o. modeller and painter, based in north-east Italy. I said modeller First because I do love making and converting or simply put together stuff more than I like to paint (the boring part, imho) but most important I am NOT a player. Not anymore, at least. I used to play warhammer fantasy 5' and 6' edition, the best ones, but I was Always in love with old lore, models and artwork, not to mention the old panting style. Thats why I'm here. The project I will present is not exactly ment to be played, or at least not with the 3' edition ruleset, so I Hope not to mess up totally with the points and composition rules..

So onto the project...

"In a time before time, mankind was the prey. hidden in Shadows and Fear, men and women shivered against monsters and animals; the Orcs from the plains and the Fimir from the swamps. But those were only the lesser threat for humanity, for many horrors more lurked in the darkness"

"But then a child was Born, under the miracle of a two-tailed comet, a child destined to gather the sparse tribes of men and lead them in a new age of Hope...

-THE UNBEROGENES-

I Always liked the dark ages, the barbarians and such. In almost every setting (especially in Conan lore and his child Warhammer) and in our actual History, so obviously, my first steps in the miniature were when as young boy I first bought some Mirliton's blister of Marc Copplestone metal barbarians in a store in Florence and then my passion was born. More than 25 years have passed since then and FINALLY I have the chance to gather my old models and build a proper army with the skill set and the possibilities I have now.. so I stripped some old painted models, kept some other I still like and made a rapid count. Not enough.

So I bought some reinforcement, very glad to discover that Mirliton is still on business and still produce in metal the old range I knew and love. So new oldschool lead It Is. And also now I have no moral issues in modify or convert those Barbarians. 

The concept is simple.

I wanted a barbarian force, with beefy naked savages in the good old '80s style, and import it in the Warhammer world to represent the hard boiled people before the unification, before the empire. In those turbulent times of Legend.  Can I make something cooler than this? Surely not. 

If you think there is something more epic in Warhammer, you are WRONG

And so, After opening some blisters like I were 15, I FINALLY came up with this:

Here some warriors and leaders, still to be sorted. I plan to make one or two warbands with banner and such..

Barbarian cavalry. Some more armor on them, maille, mainly, but will work. Those count as the elite warriors of the tribe.

Barbarian hunters, those will be skirmisher. I plan to mount on round bases to better fit that role.

A Little oddity: a metal recast of THE BARBARIAN, the One that need no further presentation... I honestly dont remember were he came from or when I bought/found him, but that is a cool add to my project, even if it is not an original cast. He is metal so I let him in.

Bonus point, this should be and old representation of Sigmar himself, as in the Heroquest rulebook so is stated...

The force so far. Still missing some leaders, a couple models more and conversions, but I have already some plans to spice them up... (And a couple of Surprises left on purpose out of Pic)

Still Im unsure if I want to include a model for Sigmar himself or not: I also love the idea that the Hero of mankind is not even born yet, and so using his father, Björn Unberogen as a warchief .. lets keep this for the future (and if I find a suitable model)

After a long long decision process I FINALLY chose to refer to 3rd edition chaos army list. I know, I know, is chaos and shouldn't be, but honestly I think that the only units vaguely similar to barbarians in the period GW ruleset are Chaos thugs and marauder, or at least as far as I know, so I build a "count as" army, knowing for sure that human tribes BEFORE the empire were not that different from the Norscan, at that time before time. I'm still new to these rules and still have no idea how to define Heroes, command groups and such, so I want to keep stuff as simple as possibile. Here the main pages of the book.

The only rules composition I really understood is that I must have less points in Heroes than in troops, easy. I still Plan to NOT play with this ruleset, but when my kids grow up enough we surely field those barbarians, most probably with another system or at least whfb 5 or 6 ed . Enough words, here the list.

*) name (count as): equipment. Points

-----------Heroes and command:  Total 467--------

1) barbarian leader (Chaos champion): 2 hand weapons, heavy armor.                        130pt

2) barbarian leader (Chaos champion): two-handed weapon, heavy armor.           130pt

3) barbarian leader (Chaos champion): hand weapon, shield heavy armor.               129pt

4) barbarian banner bearer (chaos champion): hand weapon, army banner, heavy armor. 178pt

----------------Rank and files: Total 1106-----------------

1) barbarian warband (20 chaos thugs): 2 hand weapons, light armor.                             180pt

2) barbarian warband (20 chaos thugs): hand weapon, shield, light armor.                 180pt

3) barbarian cavalry (10 mounted chaos thugs): hand weapon, light armor, shield        180pt

4) barbarian secret unit, to be revealed in wild card month.                                               376pt

5) barbarian hunting party (10 chaos thugs): hand weapon, light armor, bow.           100pt

6) barbarian hunting party (10 chaos thugs): hand weapon, light armor, javelines (throwing axes).                                                            90pt

Further details of unit names and composition in the dedicated entries.

An Unberogen Warrior 

OK, so . I think have enough meat on the grill.. for now. I dont plan to add something else in the future, but Who knows? Six months are long to pass, maybe i Will find something cool, maybe i Will change my plans... I still have some ideas and Surprises. This season Will be wild!

See you soon. Keep yourself oldschool..

Byron's Introduction - Eälindor's Reaver Corps.

Eälindor's Reaver Corps.  - Eldar Pirates

This coming OWAC I plan to paint Eldar Pirates. There's a lot to cover in this introduction, so I will provide a quick roadmap before jumping in. First, I will start with the inspiration for my project, discuss my my color scheme ideas, and then end with a list of all the minis I plan to paint. 

First a picture of my scratch-built Wave Serpent/Raider hybrid. (For the thumbnail and because I am proud of my trash-made vehicle)

Inspiration

The ultimate inspiration for this project comes from Space Fleet. A few years back, a friend hosted a game of Space Fleet at a local convention that he hosts. I was hooked. I quickly acquired the three factions, Eldar, Imperials, and Tyranids. The Eldar fleet I painted first.

The Eldar Fleet rules for Space Fleet only included 2 types of ships, Wraithships and Shadow Hunters. I tracked some of those down. Then found that they made Nightwings for Epic and added some of those. A close up of one of my nightwing fighters.

One of my Wraithships came in sorry shape, so I heavily converted it to look like it was being torn apart by a torpedo and breaking up. I gave this ship an ill-fated name after the scenario at the end of the 3rd ed WFB rulebook.

Wanting to expand my fleet more, I looked for other contemporary references and found the counters for Doom of the Eldar. These counters included the nightwings, shadowhunters, wraithships and one more ship that I hadn't see any mini for, the Ghostdragon. 

The Ghostdragon appeared similar to a concept sketch by Jes Goodwin in WD 119, the "Super-Battleship or Carrier"

So, I had to build one! Below is my WIP Ghost dragon. I plan to finish it during OWAC. I think I will call it the Caledor.

This is a picture of my ghost dragon before I started painting it. Here you can see all of the bits I pulled together to build it as well as my putty work:

1. 2 Wraithships

2. 2 Epic Wave Serpents

3. An epic Eldar Titan

4. A library card cut into a big sail

Okay, so all of that is to say that I was getting really into Eldar Pirates, when I organized a local swap meet and found myself with the opportunity to trade for a bunch of RT era Eldar. Now, at this time I didn't own a single 40k mini but decided to take the plunge due to my Space Fleet collection. 

Now, I have this collection of Eldar, what do I do with them? Soon after this I decided to get my kids into Warhammer by buying minis from the old Macragge starter set since I had heard 4th was a simple edition. But, there are no Eldar Pirates in 4th edition. My first stab was to use the 3rd edition Dark Eldar as Pirate Eldar - basically I tried to line up RT Eldar with entries in the Dark Eldar book. This worked pretty well, but it resulted in some compromises. 

I remembered the EPIC Wave Serpent mini that I purchased for the Ghostdragon and I really liked its quirky design. I had to have one in my army, but it didn't quite match the functionality of the DE raider. The DE raider is a lightly armored and open topped vehicle with side platforms from which warriors can disembark.

 +

 So I crafted this compromise between the two. It has the general shape and form of a wave serpent, except that it has disembarkation platforms on the side like a raider. 

More RT/DE Inspiration

This image of Eldar with some sort of shoulder mounted weapon (can someone ID what it is in the comments??) appears in the RT rulebook.

So I converted a handful of Eldar to have shoulder-mounted Lascannons (note the choice of Hex bases because, in Warhammer history, they are relatively (I think AD&D and maybe LotR may have used them too) unique to the RT period.)

In WD 119, Jes Goodwin shared sketches of Eldar Pirate crewmembers. The two details I latched onto were the helmet tassels and the breather tubes. If I had an infinite amount of time I might have considered the gloves, bandoliers, and spats as well. 

Here is an example of a converted space elf with breather tube and helmet tassel. Nearly all of the helmeted space elves got this basic conversion work one. 

Early RT Eldar also feature Standard Bearers

As well as the early advertisements. 

I didn't have the original backpack banner so I had to improvise a new one out  of a toothpick and green stuff. The WD Space Fleet articles about flag ships include an icon for the Eldar Flag ship. I recreated this icon by hand for the top of the standard.

You can see the triple Yin Yang icon on the banner on the far right. 

A final detail in the army is that I have tried to purge my army of obvious aspect warriors. Many of my aspect warriors have had their heads swapped. This way they appear more like a ragtag army of Eldar rather than units of stylized warriors. Some of the heads looked too difficult to removed, so they've been left. But enough are swapped that no single unit remains in aspect form.

Anywho, Jump forward a few months of playing with the kids, and I ended up making a RT-inspired Eldar Pirate mini-codex for 4th edition. The codex is filled with references to the Pirate Eldar list in the book of the Astronomican. For the purposes of OWAC I will do my best to record my progress using RT era points and names, but I also want to be transparent about how I have been playing with them. 

Color Scheme

My planned color scheme isn't terribly inventive. Basically, I want my pirates to match my fleet. So this means that they will be grey-blue armor panels, lime green helmets, and with scarlet to denote weapons/danger bits. I want to use dark navy for their jump suits and give them dark blue mail where they have it. 

Since they are Pirates, I think I will go with the traditional scheme of painting their helmets with dark wiggles/flames/tiger stripes

Now, The Minis

I have a handful of shoulder-mounted Lascannons. I know that even in RT that Eldar use weapons platforms. However, having shoulder-mounted weapons felt more old school, like the monopose missile launcher marines  that came with the 2nd edition starter set, or the plastic guard kit with shoulder-mounted heavy weapons. These will bolster my Warrior Squads.

Next, I have 3 Eldar with Shuriken cannons. I'm not sure how these would be fielded in RT. But shuriken cannons were a staple by 2nd edition. 

These are my close combat troops that I will field as a Falcon Squad. They are mostly a combination of Harlequins and Striking Scorpions that have been modded (at least the Scorpions have been). There is also a wych whose head has been replaced with a dire avenger helmet and equipped with a more recent pistol and sword bit. 

These are my Eldar Warriors. A mixed matched group of guardians, space elves, a ranger, a Dark Eldar, some weapons platform crew, swooping hawks etc. Their heads have been swapped around and they carry an assortment of lasguns, shuriken catapults, and splinter rifles. 

Next, there are my Razorwings. Functionally they are identical to scourges or Eldar with jump packs and multilasers. They are a mix of Dark Eldar scourges, swooping hawks, and other RT eldar with wings.

The Lochiarch (the analog for Sybarites) for the unit is a heavily converted Scourge Sybarite. They've been given a gender swap, an RT helmet, pistol swapped from right to left hand, given a power sword, and swapped their DE wings for the Swooping Hawk exarch wings.

Eldar Baggage Train

For a while I've been mildly obsessed with the idea of a RT baggage train. Baggage trains seem like a quintessential oldhammer element and I want to carry that over to RT and my pirates. I assume they have to have some way to load their plunder and manage their stowage. 

So I converted a wraithlord thingy into a Wraithdrone cargo bot. I swapped his upper arms with his thighs. This made him much shorter and made his arms gangly - making him must less graceful. I swapped his left hand for a grav weapon platform piece that loos like a clamp. I put a spoon on his back as a bin to carry cargo. He's been fairly heavily converted.

Next, I wanted something like a wagon or a pick-up truck. I thought the war walker was a weird mini with the pilot jutting out front, so I applied that same arrangement to a little hover truck. It's made from a mix of bits, an old debit card, and a hair tie. 

I am happy that the trunk is big enough to slot a standard base into the back. Those sorts of details and versatility just makes me happy. 

Camp followers. I made a handful of camp followers using blood bowl elves. I put random Eldar bits in their hands so now instead of being catchers they are loaders. I also made a random pile of bits to act as stowage. I am happy that this bit of stowage can fit in the pick-up truck to be hauled about. 

Points/Army Composition

Army Composition in Rogue Trader

The Rogue Trader rulebook doesn't have force composition rules. However, there is some reference for armies from that era. In the Book of the Astronomican there is an Eldar Pirate Army list. This list is designed for a force that is 1,500 to 2,000 points. Leaders, Squads, and Support are each given a range of points that can be allocated to them. These translate to the following fractions of points:

Leaders: 25-66% of the army

Squads: 30-100% of the army

Support: 0-60% of the army

This compares to 2nd edition Eldar:

Characters: 1-50% of the army

Squads: 25%+

Support: 0-50%

Harlequins: 0-50%

Leaders

Pelagarch - Eldar Major Hero w/ conversion field, mesh armor, power sword, las pistol, level 1 psyker abilities, 3 level 1 abilities, psi level 10 = 170.5 pts

Farseer - Eldar Minor hero w/ conversion field, power weapon, level 4 psyker abilities, 3 lvl 1 abilities, 3 lvl 2 abilities, 2 lvl 3 abilities, 2 lvl 4 abilities, psi level 35 = 260 pts

Warlock - Eldar Minor hero w/ conversion field, power weapon, las pistol, level 2 psyker abilities, 3 lvl 1 abilities, 3 lvl 2 abilities, psi level 20 = 102.5 pts

Falcon Squad Lochiarch - Eldar Champion w/ mesh armor, refractor field, Chainsword and las pistol = 14.5 pts

Razor Wing Lochiarch - Eldar Champion w/ mesh armor, refractor field, jump pack, power sword and las pistol x1 = 22 pts

Sub-total: 569.5 (36%)

Squads

Warrior Squads

Eldar w/ mesh armor, refractor fields, and Las Cannons x 6 = 333 pts

Eldar w/ mesh armor, refractor fields, and heavy bolters x 3 = 76.5 pts

Eldar w/ mesh armor, refractor fields, and shuriken catapults x 10 = 125 pts

Eldar w/ mesh armor, refractor fields, and lasguns x 5 = 60 pts

Eldar w/ mesh armor, refractor fields, and autogun x 1 = 12 pts

Falcon Squad

Eldar w/ mesh armor, refractor fields, hand weapons and las pistols x 6 = 69 pts

Razor Wing Squad

Eldar w/ mesh armor, refractor fields, jump pack, heavy heavy bolters x 4 =  110 pts

Eldar w/ mesh armor, refractor field, jump pack, lasgun x1 = 14 pts

Sub-total:764.5 (48%)

Support 

Wave Serpent (grav attack tank, with increased capacity, swapped weapons for a single las cannon, -2 damage, and only a 6+ save.) = 240 pts (15%)

Non-point extras

Space pickup truck

Wraithdrone

Stevedores

Standard bearer

Musician

_________________________________________________________________

Total 1609 pts

Stretch Goals

In addition to all the models I have prepped I also have a heap of additional eldar minis. There is a mix of warriors, close combat troops (Falcon and Crotalid squads), and a few support weapons like flamers.

Finally, I have this thing. It's the base to the kids' broken toy telescope. I thought it had an Eldar vibe and could make some basic terrain like an HQ or outpost of some sort. We'll see.