40k Dark Eldar - Archon and Ur-Ghuls complete!

It has been stupendously hot of late so after work the hobby loft just isn't comfortable to work in for more than brief stretches - sadly that means my usual frenetic pace has slowed dramatically over the last couple weeks. However, I have done a wee bit of painting and finished off the Archon and the first models from the Court, a trio of Ur-Ghuls!

 

First up, Archon Zaergarn Kul of the Kabal of the Splintered Talon. Not a lot of changes from the earlier pics, finished up the face and cleaned up a few bits, flocked and sealed. Easy peasy!

Next are the trio of Ur-Ghuls that will be part of the Court of the Archon. Fairly straightforward scheme, went with a light grey followed by a violet wash (to keep the purple theme going), and a couple successive drybrush passes to bring it back up to a greyish skintone. Honestly not a huge fan of the models (as there's only one pose and it's less than dynamic) and in retrospect I probably should have gone with some plastic vampire counts Ghouls and a little greenstuff instead.

Finally, a squad of Kabalite Warriors - I always try to get the troops done early in the project so I can move on to the "fun stuff". Not much to say about 'em, basic Blaster and Dark Lance loadout. Hoping to get some paint on 'em this coming weekend when I can do some work in the cool of the morning!

40k Dark Eldar - Archon in progress

In other gaming news, I'm in the midst of running a Rogue Trader campaign for a group of friends which currently has them caught in the Dark Eldar's evil clutches. I've been vacillating between Craftworld or Dark Eldar as the counterpoint force for the Harlequins and ended up coming down on the side of the denizens of Commoragh. This is, in part, because I have a significant amount of leftover Dark Eldar bits and kits from the last go around a few years back, and I felt it was better for the pocketbook to finally utilize those models rather than buy a whole new army from scratch. For fun I thought I'd lead off with the head honcho and picked up one of the new plastic Archon models.

 

I wasn't a big fan of the default "both weapons crossed over his chest" pose, so did some rooting around for alternate arms and with a little cutting was able to come up with something a little more open and at least a little more dynamic, with the sword and head following the flow of the cape and chains.

 

Got him more or less finished off over the last few days, just a few more little details to pick out/clean up, then he'll be ready for static grass and sealant. Going with purple armor plates this go-around, with a jade green as the spot color - that will be a bit more predominant on larger armor plates and so forth on upcoming models. Had fun with the flayed cloak, tried to get a couple different skin tones in there to give it a patchwork feel. He's rather creepy!

Next up for the Dark Eldar are the Court of the Archon and his Raider, though they're sitting unassembled in a box at the moment. Next up on the painting desk however are more of my beloved Thousand Sons - set the batch painting machine for "A whole mess (likely literally) of red!"