Eldar army painting continues and something a bit different - Daemon Engines!

Hi folks,

I'm back after a brief hiatus (i.e. holiday) and feel pretty inspired GW wise after the break. I have 3 main projects taking up my hobby time at the moment: first is the Space marine painting showcase which I will feature on my other Blog; second is my ongoing Eldar project and third is my latest venture - Daemon Engines! 

About the Eldar first though. I've made a lot of progress with the 1850 army I want to take to Blog wars 6 this November and am solidly on track, hopefully without the last minute rush this time. Recently I've been working on some of the Aspect squads and thought I would share both the Dark reaper and Warp Spider WIP squads. Note, both have subtle conversions - a reaper launcher instead of shuriken cannon in the case of the reapers and the warp spider have had the chunky blades on their deathspinners slimmed down. Note also the warp energy flowing across the warp spider backpacks.

Next up are Daemon engines. The new Lord of skulls had me harkening back to the days of Epic and made me think of my own CSM army. It's the most recent army that I started and, TBH, I'm having trouble enthusing myself towards it. It should be an absolute pleasure to paint/convert such an army, but I think the fact I can't decide which direction to go in with it has stalled my enthusiasm. However, One element of the army that I did want was a Dark Mechanicus one. A rogue warpsmith and his band of Acolytes (cultists) plus his damned beasts. 

Playing the nostalgia card, I decided that the only way to get any god-specific daemon engines was either to fork out on Forgeworld or Epicast (on Ebay) or to scratchbuild/convert my own takes on things. So I picked up a good condition defiler for £10 and made a pretty straightforward brass scorpion (counts as Defiler) - a simple enough conversion that, when painted black/brass/red will look suitably like a variant of the Epic brass scorpion. I thought about incorporating curved plates (multi-layer card) and guitar wire as a nod to the FW greater Brass scorpion, or a skull head and buzzsaws as a homage to the old. In the end though I settled for this as it was quick, straightforward and effective. 

My next crazed projects involve a counts as Heldrake (Tzeentch Doomwing) and a counts as Vindicator (cannon of Khorne) to join the ranks. Watch this space!