The Kabal of the Crimson Woe - Complete!

After far too much procrastination, I'm happy to say the Kabal of the Crimson Woe is finally finished!

I'm fairly pleased with how they turned out - it's a nice little raiding force that exemplifies the Dark Eldar's swift and merciless way of war.

  

Here's a series of pics that are a bit more zoomed in. The entire army can start the game either in transports or lurking in reserve.

 

The last things awaiting paint were the various transports for the army. First up, the Crimson King's Raider. For the two Archons I went with dual sails to represent the Enhanced Aethersails upgrades and to help them stand out as the HQ transports.

 

The second Raider belongs to Duke Harkanet the Golden, and his Incubi bodyguard. As their armor is all heavily gold, I figured their transport should be similarly themed.

 

Next up is the custom Venom I'd built when the codex first came out. It transports the Kabalite Trueborn into battle.

 

Finally are the two Raiders for the Wyches and Warriors. These tow are significantly less blinged out to represent the lower caste of the troops they transport.

All in all I'm quite relieved to be done with the army - while I enjoyed the different play style the Dark Eldar bring to the table, I can't say that they particularly suit my disposition. I much prefer the sledgehammer of the Guard! I'll be putting them up on the auction block in due course, once I get one last game in with them. I always enjoy playing a game with a completely-painted army!

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year!

Adeptus Custodes Terminators

Not a huge amount of forward progress on the Dark Eldar of late, I've been working on batch painting four Raiders and a Venom all at the same time. That's been more than a little tedious, so I decided to take a break from the red and gold paint scheme and instead paint something... gold... and red. Argh.

I'd picked up these Custodes Terminators years and years ago and they have patiently waited in the Closet of Doom until the recent release of the new Grey Knights. After reading through the codex, I figured that they would be well-represented on the tabletop as a unit of Paladins, and set about building them accordingly utilizing a mix of the GK Terminator arms, and the arms that came with the Custodes originally.

 

As there isn't really a 'Sergeant' for the unit, I went with a slightly-more-ornate Nemesis Force Halberd for one of the models.

Though it's not nearly as powerful as the almighty Psycannon, the artwork for the Custodes clearly shows them carrying a flame lance, so I've included one in the unit as a counts-as Incinerator.

  

Rounding out the unit are three more NFH-armed terminators. Unfortunately all of the main bodies for the Custodes are identical, so I tried to utilize the varied arm poses to try and get them to look a bit more individual. As I have no plans to run a GK army, these models will be going on eBay this coming weekend...

As mentioned earlier, I'm in the midst of batch painting all the transports for the Dark Eldar, and snapped a quick picture of them while I was about it. Still a ways to go, but at least all the main colors have been blocked in!

The Kabal of the Crimson Woe, Part 7 - Raider and Venom paint test

As I'd mentioned previously, my initial idea for the paint scheme for the Kabal of the Crimson Woe was predominantly black, fading to a crimson/red at the edges. However, when I actually started trying to paint the scheme, I found that the transition from black to red just looked too abrupt, especially on the larger plates on the various skimmers. Instead I've decided that the base color would be red, and I'd build up to a brighter red edging. So, below are the two test vehicles using the new scheme - first up, one of the Archon's Raiders:

Obviously, all I've done so far is just the red sections, all of the detail work still remains to be done. I'm still a little sloppy on the edge work, but practice makes perfect as they say! The plates are undercoated in Dark Flesh, followed by a Red Gore and Blood Red edging. Once that's done, I washed the plates with Baal Red which darkened them up a bit and smoothed out some of the more jagged edging fumbles. I then applied the same technique to the Venom:

Again, a little rough on the edging, I need to work on smoothing out that part of the process. Overall however I'm pleased with the resulting color - it's a nice dark crimson, which works well for a group called the Kabal of the Crimson Woe!

The Kabal of the Crimson Woe, Part 3 - Venom and Trueborn

I decided that I wanted to include a small unit of Kabalite Trueborn to the army, and rather than building yet another Raider, I thought I'd take a crack at kitbashing a Venom for them. I was inspired by the recent Venom build challenge on BoLS/Spikybits and particularly impressed with the Venom Conversion guide on TooMuchMetal here. I dug out the appropriate bits and got stuck in:

So far it's just the basic structure, as it's going to be the transport for the more noble Kabalite Trueborn I'm planning on adding a fair bit of decorative bits - spikes and chains, banners, etc.

The whole thing went together surprisingly quickly and I'm thinking I might go ahead and make another one!

Of course, I need some Trueborn to go in the Venom, and a nasty little unit it would be - A Dracon with the ever-popular Blast Pistol/Agonizer combo and 4 Trueborn with Blasters. In order to differentiate them from the standard Kabalite Warriors, I went with the mirrored helmets from the Reavers. I think it gives them a rather distinct look.