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Wow, really, really beautiful work! The classic models, the classic paint scheme, and just done to perfection. This is all so impressive. I just love the green and white scheme. This whole project makes me feel like I am reading a White Dwarf from the 90’s. Truly impressive work. I salute you.

-Rids

Wow, thanks again everybody. I didn't quite expect such a reaction to the Warp Hunter, but I'm glad you all like it! It takes quite a long time to paint my grav tanks like that, but I love the result and plan to keep doing it. Problem is I've still got several to paint and would like to get my hands on a few more!

Complete: 2 Wave Serpents, 1 Falcon, 1 Warp Hunter. To Do: 2 Falcons, 1 Fire Prism, 1 Scorpion.
I've also got a Night Spinner turret that I was able to put together from the spare pieces from the Warp Hunter, it's only missing a cockpit canopy, so if I can sort that out I've got an alternative turret for my Fire Prism - but one of my mates has a grav tank chassis that he's not using, so he's offered me that in exchange for bits. So, I'll have a Night Spinner to do as well. Then, I feel that one Fire Prism isn't enough, and two Wave Serpents certainly isn't enough for a Swordwind this size...

 The Riddle of Steel wrote:
Wow, really, really beautiful work! The classic models, the classic paint scheme, and just done to perfection. This is all so impressive. I just love the green and white scheme. This whole project makes me feel like I am reading a White Dwarf from the 90’s. Truly impressive work. I salute you.

-Rids

Thanks, that's the sort of reaction that I love to see! Particularly the 90's White Dwarf, given that it was a 90's issue of WD that originally set me on this journey. I'm glad I've been able to evoke some of the paintjobs that made me fall in love with Biel-Tan in the first place.

In other news, I'm weak and couldn't resist ordering the Apocalypse box. I'll end up with more wraiths than I'll ever need, but they're cool so that's not a problem! I'm particularly liking the thought that I'll end up with 5 Wraithlords, which ought to look pretty cool as a group. It'll be like having a squad of them! I was also very keen to get my hands on a second plastic spiritseer. I've got several of the foot farseers on sprue that I want to do some kitbashing with, and another spiritseer gives me options. I'm thinking of bashing the spiritseer head, staff and backpiece onto one of the farseer bodies, and putting the warlock head off the skyrunner onto the spiritseer along with a witchblade or spear to make a plastic foot warlock. Should be fun to see what I can come up with.

Really nice vine work (or wine vork) on the Warp Hunter, dude.

You're not alone in ordering the Apoc box - though alongside Wake the Dead and a SC I may have too many Wraith units?

This is a great log with beautifully painted miniatures. The greens in particular are spot on - makes me want to do an Eldar army

I can’t believe I’ve not commented here before! Just finished looking through the back catalogue, and have to say I agree with The Riddle of Steel that it’s like looking through old white dwarfs! Your grav tanks look particularly sweet and a squad of wraithlords will be truly something to behold! Will you treat them all like your vehicles or switch up the white and green on some? Perhaps the leader could be white?

Incredible work on that Warp Hunter! It really was worth waiting for.
Always loved the design of that. Maybe I should order one somewhere in the future.

Thanks again for the comments folks, much appreciated, and I'm glad you like it. The army rolls on, plenty more to do.

gobert wrote:
I can’t believe I’ve not commented here before! Just finished looking through the back catalogue, and have to say I agree with The Riddle of Steel that it’s like looking through old white dwarfs! Your grav tanks look particularly sweet and a squad of wraithlords will be truly something to behold! Will you treat them all like your vehicles or switch up the white and green on some? Perhaps the leader could be white?

Cheers! I've done two wraithlords already (photo of the two of them together on the previous page), one white body/green head, and one the other way around. I enjoy mixing them up, and I think it's one of the advantages to painting Biel-Tan when compared to other craftworlds. I think that's particularly the case for wraiths, because the studio have painted them both ways round over the years. I know back in the day when I first got into Biel-Tan, they tended to paint the wraithguard green with white heads, and the wraithlords white with green heads, but I've seen the inversions plenty too. I think I may lean towards green, if only because on something like a wraithlord/guard I think I can paint the green a bit faster than the white. There's a lot of highlights on the green, but layering up the white, doing my dark grey panel outline and then tidying it up with more white takes ages on something with so many panels and bumps.

Despite it feeling natural to invert the scheme on wraith units, I haven't really done it at all on guardians/vehicles. I've been tempted for a white to maybe do a Falcon totally white, but with green vine patterns or something, then come up with some fluff as to why it's different. I think that might look quite striking as part of a squadron of grav tanks in the standard green.

Back on the topic of the wraithlords, as and when I get around to them (it may be a while!) I may try some more dynamic/interesting poses, possibly with fixed loadouts. The two I've got are fairly standard poses and fully magnetised, so that covers my bases for wanting a wraithlord with X loadout when writing a list. I can get a bit more creative with the other three.

---

Since I'm posting, do I have an update? Nothing finished at this point. There will be a minor delay in getting more Eldar done as I work on a High Elf Phoenix for this month's painting challenge, but I'm steadily progressing the eldar alongside. I've got a squad of Howling Banshees that are getting towards the final stages but still have a fair amount of highlighting to go. Also, after caving and buying the apocalypse box and realising that it left me with just 10 finished wraithguard but 25 untouched on sprue, I've built up 5 Wraithblades with axes, and got as far as putting some basecoats down. I've got another 3 windriders, a Fire Prism and a mess of characters on my painting bench too, which will probably be among the next units to be finished.

And I'm going to promise again that I'll sort out an up to date army shot. Eventually!

EDIT: The pictures I posted of the Warp Hunter, I later realised that I'd forgotten the underslung shuriken cannon. It's magnetised, and I'd just forgotten to pop it on. And now those photos look weird that it isn't there! Here's how it looks with the cannon attached:

Wow Beautiful work on the warp hunter

Bellerophon,

Nice to see the model 'complete'.

Cheers,

CB

A small update from me today, but with plenty more to come. I've finished (well, finished a few days ago but only just got around to photographing) my second squad of 3rd edition Howling Banshees. I've painted these in a scheme inspired by the Ebon Witch shrine, which I thought would make a good contrast against my more traditional all-over bone first squad. Completing this squad has pushed the points count of the fully painted army over 5k, which is a lovely milestone - even though I think the unpainted pile is about 7k, so I'm not quite halfway on points.


*Note - back to using gallery image links. I had some problems with them a short while back so some of the more recent posts have used imgur. Click on the pic for gallery page and full size*

Plenty more in the nearly finished stages that I should be able to post in the next week or so, so stay tuned! Particularly, a squad of Wraithblades and a Crimson Hunter Exarch which literally just need some finishing touches.

Lovely. That blue is so good as a spot color against the dark suit.

That's a mighty collection!
I bet the crimson hunter looks fantastic!

Cheers both!

I have some finished photos of the Crimson Hunter Exarch; I played in a doubles game yesterday and wanted to have the flyer ready for it. It was 1500 points per player - my Biel-Tan and an army of Primaris, vs a chaos coalition of Death Guard and CSM/Daemonkin. I took a sorta-fluffy army with one or two concessions to what's good -

Farseer, Warlock, 20-model Guardian Bomb with 2 shuricannons, two 5-strong units of Dire Avengers, 5 Fire Dragons, 5 Dark Reapers, 7 Swooping Hawks, two Wave Serpents, the Warp Hunter and the Crimson Hunter Exarch.

Not a full report, but some highlights - Chaos went first, and blew up the Crimson Hunter turn 1 before it had a chance to do anything at all, and stripped 2/3rds of the wounds off the Warp Hunter. The Warp Hunter glided forwards and used the warp rift on a Chaos Leviathan and took about half the wounds off it; and was promptly blown up by return fire in Chaos turn 2. The Chaos army also took out 1/3rd of my ally's army when they blew up his Fire Raptor, which promptly exploded in the middle of a load of his other models and spread some mortal wounds around. We were pretty much done for from that point onwards. The Wave Serpents and the Tempest Launcher between them did quite well at taking out the enemy Havocs, but all the rest of the Dark Reapers plinked every single shot off the Leviathan without doing any damage. The two most memorable moments of the game for me were the Guardians and the Fire Dragons. The Guardians deep-struck in using the webway strategem, then with the aid of Guide and Doom promptly shredded a Daemon Prince. The Fire Dragons were happily riding in their Wave Serpent when it got crunched in close combat by a Defiler. They were thrown clear of the downed transport, picked themselves up and took aim. Four of the five shots wounded. The defiler had 12 wounds left. They were in melta range. The first two damage rolls were both 6. The other two were wasted. They killed it too well. It promptly blew up, and took out 3 of the Fire Dragons in the explosion...

Anyway, the Crimson Hunter Exarch... I decided to use pretty much the same as the studio scheme, except with my usual painting the inside of the cockpit glass. It came out a bit blotchy and it's the one bit of the model I'm not totally satisfied with. Just behind the cockpit I decided to use a small Biel-Tan decal, alongside the Exarch and the Crimson Hunter runes.





---

And, since I had 1500 points of models out of the display case anyway, it seemed like a good time to do what I've been promising to do for ages and take some more full army photos. This comes to somewhere around 5250pts depending on upgrades. I haven't figured out the power rating recently.

Total:
5x Farseers
1x Spiritseer
5x Warlocks
1x Autarch
1x Avatar of Khaine
30x Guardians w/ 3 weapon platforms
20x Dire Avengers (two 5 model squads with twin catapult Exarchs, one 10 model squad with Diresword Exarch)
1x Bonesinger
10x Fire Dragons
20x Howling Banshees
11 Striking Scorpions (2 Exarchs, one with claw, one with biting blade)
10 Wraithguard (5 with Wraithcannons, 5 with D-Scythe)
20 Swooping Hawks
10 Warp Spiders
6 Windriders*
2 War Walkers*
2 Wraithlords*
5 Dark Reapers (Tempest Launcher Exarch)
1 Falcon*
2 Wave Serpents*
1 Warp Hunter*
1 Crimson Hunter Exarch*
1 Wraithknight w/ Suncannon & Shield, magnetised shoulder guns
(models marked * are fully magnetised for loadout)

Anyway, the photos. Open in the gallery for full size!

'Scuse me (wipes tear), dust or something...

That's amazing, man. Beautiful army.

Great shots of your warhost! Truly impressive array of minis

awesome looking army, great to see it all together

That is an awesome display. It would be amazing to one day put mine on the table next to yours for a massive game!

Thanks everyone! It was great seeing them all arrayed on the table like that, even though it took quite a while to set them up and then put them away again afterwards. It's a motivator to keep painting more as well, I'd love to see what it looks like after I paint up everything in the queue.

 Fifty wrote:
That is an awesome display. It would be amazing to one day put mine on the table next to yours for a massive game!

That would be great - and if/when it happens, hopefully I'll have painted up plenty more!

Fantastic army shot Bellerophon.

Post Exalted.

Cheers,

CB

Cheers captain!

New additions - I've got a squad of wraithblades finished. I'd got these done a couple of weeks ago, but I've only just got around to taking photos. They were bumped up the list somewhat by my acquisition of the apocalypse box and realising that I suddenly had rather a lot of wraiths on sprue, which prompted me to get another squad done. I'm quite pleased with the effect on the axe blades - I painted them in VMC dark sand, then glazed over with VMC Transparent Blue mixed with a lot of medium. It was quick and dirty, but I think it's quite effective.



Also painted up two OOP metal Autarchs. I got these together on ebay from the same seller and I think I said at the time that I suspect they're recasts - but never mind. They were rather fun to paint, even if they did linger on my painting bench for longer than I intended -




Next on the list:
- 3 Windriders nearly finished
- 1 Fire Prism/Night Spinner basecoated
- 11 Rangers basecoated - recently picked these up from ebay to fill one of the holes in my collection and I'd like to get them done soon for actual gaming purposes
- 5 Shadow Spectres, Exarch & Irillyth finally built

I'm starting to wonder how long I'm going to keep hammering away at this excessive collection before I give it a break for another project. I think it's a sign of my love for the eldar that I've kept going, painting eldar almost exclusively for as long as I have, but recently I've thrown in a couple of different models for the painting challenge and it's been nice to have a bit of a change. Certainly though, there's particular models that I really want to get done before I set my green paints aside - namely my shadow spectres and scorpion (because FW is expensive enough without letting it sit around unpainted, and they're brilliant models) and also most of my old metals because I feel it would be a waste of effort tracking them down on ebay if I don't get them painted up!

I'm also contemplating finally getting myself an airbrush soon, I'd love to see if I can improve my layered green vehicle highlights, so I might get through a few grav tanks. Certainly I'd love to try it out on a falcon or something, then go all out on the scorpion.

Love the wings on the autarch, very cool. The blades in the wraiths are great too, it’s great when something quick and easy turns out so well!

Grand new additions. Love the capes. Can't wait to see the Spectres & Irillyth.

I did not know they made those two Autarchs in metal...I always thought they were a plastic kit.

Keep at it Bellerophon and finish those Eldar...it is great when they are no more models stilling around when an army gets finished.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks folks.

Captain Brown wrote:
I did not know they made those two Autarchs in metal...I always thought they were a plastic kit.

Keep at it Bellerophon and finish those Eldar...it is great when they are no more models stilling around when an army gets finished.

Cheers,

CB

Yeah, those were launched in metal when Eldar got the last major revamp with the 4th Ed codex. Very cool models, and had to pay a fair bit on ebay. As to finishing the Eldar... I've got many thousands of points to paint! At least a year or two's painting just to get through my Eldar backlog, and that's if I don't buy anything more. When clearly I'll be buying too many of the new plastic Howling Banshees, even though I have 20 in metal. Because it's plastic aspect warriors, and I feel an obligation to do my bit for helping them sell well enough to encourage GW to update the others too, that and they look cool. So, I'm keeping at it for now, there's definitely things I'd like to get painted before I allow myself to get too sidetracked (doing a High Elf Prince for the painting challenge atm...), but after I get through my remaining Forgeworld stuff I might have a bit of a break. I'll see how I feel when I get there.

I finally caved and bought an airbrush. It's a cheap Chinese model, but with a decent tanked compressor. I'm still getting used to it, but I can see how it will be really useful for laying down smooth basecoats - especially for my white. I've also started using it for varnishing. All of this army so far has been sprayed with Army Painter Anti-Shine Matt Varnish from a rattlecan, it's always come out rather satin and rattlecans can be a bit of a pain. I never really tried any other brands of spray because I know they can be finicky and I figured better the devil you know - and it was good for consistency. But now with an airbrush, I'd heard good things about AK Interactive Ultra Matte, and I'm a fan of AK Interactive in general. So I got some, and damn it's good. Beautifully matte like I wanted all along, though it does leave the models feeling a little bit waxy. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Anyway, I've finished my Rangers. The latest haul from ebay, and one group even had the direct only ranger that I inexplicably didn't buy when they went on made to order. Strike off another one for my sense of completionism.



And three more windriders for the group, bringing the total to nine:

These are glorious!

Particularly like the warp pack autarch!
The warp spiders are really well done! The fades on the death spinners is awesome!

Nice new bikes. Congrats on scratching the DO ranger off the list.

Wonderful work Bellerophon.

I was tempted my the newer Rangers for my Alaitoc, but I took a few deep breaths and then thought how much larger they would be than the old Rogue Trader models and I was able to resist.

Posted some ratings on the newest additions.

Cheers,

CB

Just read through the entire blog, absolutely lovely painting. I love the story too - great that you are making the army of your dreams! Biel-Tan are definitely the best Eldar faction.

Been a while since I've had the chance to check out people's blogs, simply stunning work as per Bellerophon, those army shots look excellent!

The green is excellent - have been looking at revisiting my old (late 90s) collection with newer paints...
I was leaning towards the GW range before seeing this (Caliban green -> warboss -> moot green), which have the advantage of air + thicker options.

Have you had a chance to muck around with their current range - and is it pretty close to your vallejo build?