As you all know, I have been playing a lot of Kill Team with my local club; True Crit Gaming Guild. Normally, I play some faction of Eldar as they were my first miniatures and faction. I have a Craftworld, Harlequin, and Corsair Kill Team all ready. Therefore, when my FLGS got in the Hand of the Archon box I went ahead and picked it up. I figured I might as well be "The Space Elf" guy in our group.
The box has enough for 10 guys, and 8 of the ten seem to have something special about them. When I made my Corsairs I skipped some of the specialty dudes in favor of some basic guys. After reading up on the rules, I didn't skip any of the special dudes this time. I made them all.
The other big choice was to go helmetless across the board, mix it up, or all helmed. Normally, I find going without a helmet in the 41st Millennium to be ridiculous, BUT it does make character models or specialists look good. This force had a lot of specialists. However, my aversion to painting skin won and I went with all helmet headed dudes. I was pretty by the book, but a few mistakes forced me to swap around backpacks on a few guys.
From there, it was time to undercoat. Thankfully, I had a bought of nice weather and I was able to spray undercoat them outside with Grey Seer. It was just in the nick of time as it snowed the next day! That's living in the mountains for you, the weather changes dramatically and at the drop of a hat.
Of course, I planned on speed painting these guys so a basic Grey Seer undercoat was not going to cut it. I then gave them a dark grey wash to get into the recesses and cracks. Once that was set I dry-brushed the models with white. I have found that this gives really good contrast for speed paints. This took me about an afternoon of prep work to get ready for painting. I figured I could probably speed paint these guys over a weekend.
Next, I started to do the basic block painting of the models using Speed Paints from Army Painter. I have V1. Therefore, I had to be a bit careful with overlapping and the like. However, I had no real plans to do much painting beyond the speed paints.
I decided on a Blood Red body suit underlay, then Absolution Green Armor, Crusader Skin tabards, Camo Cloak pouches, and Pallid Bone weapons as the predominant scheme. Perhaps the Blood Red and the Dark Green was not the best choice.... too Holiday themed.... but I am not going back now!
However, all of my Eldar have some sort of red and green on them. Anything not covered at this point was probably getting regular painting attention and not speed paints.
This stage took me an evening.
After that I went and did just basic bases for these guys. They are meant to be used! I used Hardened Leather speed paints and then rimmed them in black. Once that was dry I brush coated them with a protective coating. Speed paints are prone to wear if not sealed, and these guys were going to see some table time.
I called them good and put them away to be gamed with. 10 models done for the year! A nice palette cleanser before I moved back to 6mm Hittites.
They look great! The bone color really lends itself well to the Eldar aesthetic of long, rounded shapes.
ReplyDeleteI think you may be right about the red and green, but I doubt anyone will notice it unless you point it out.
You could lean into it and name the band, "Santa's Naughty Elves."