Ohh! We’re halfway there…

Well, this has taken a bit longer than expected. My effort had to be directed to fend off the forces of Nurgle for a while.

Onto the painting then! This is not a ‘how to’ guide, I paint far too randomly for that, but more an insight into how I was taught to paint minis back in the 90’s, but with the benefit of better covering paint now (I can get a smooth yellow with less than 10 layers? Luxury!)

We have already undercoated the minis when we finished the basing going for a white. I’m not a paint purist, choose the company you prefer.

The areas to be metal get filled out with a pure black, then painted or dry brushed gun metal (there is a lot of chainmail style ‘mesh armour’ on older Eldar models). 

After that, we go over all of the main armour with the same pure black, this gives you your main colour and cleans up the metal overbrush.

‘But Rufus, you magnificent moustachioed master of the mystic, why not just do a spray undercoat of black if that’s the main colour?’

Well young apprentice, the reason is twofold. First, after doing the metal, you need to repaint the black, but a black undercoat spray and black acrylic paint never look the same when dry, so starting from white, you know when you have a proper coverage of your painted black.

Second, there’s going to be yellow on here. And yellow paint can be… difficult to paint over black, so to keep the layers down, we base white. Make sense? No? Well, it was the 90’s, we had very little choice. Ask any older painter about trying to use ‘bad moon yellow’ over anything.

It gets a bit disheartening at this point, looking like a lump of black, white and silver, and you will wonder if it’s worth it, but trust the process.

See how good that yellow looks? Not even used any washes yet. All shoulder and knees yellow, all helmets red, and just to add a pop, any chunky weapon areas given the secondary colours too, this is where you see it come together.

Last stage here, helmet eye lenses, bare skin, grenades, belts, ammo canisters and hair. All done in basic colours, just blocked in for the moment. You could paint the base rims black here and play these on the table and make any tin-boy weep with jealousy.

But we aren’t stopping here, oh no, next, we go for shading and highlighting, and I have a plan for that black armour.

No School like…

When collecting and painting an oldhammer army, there is a lot to be said for how you paint and base your force, especially as late 80’s GW was a wild, ever changing place. Every new publication brings about a new way to paint a certain type of mini. 

Talking with my opponent he asked how old school I would be going, with this era of Eldar being iconic for striped helmet decoration. Well, while there is a helmet design, I told him I would be showing how things used to be done in a very different way;

Hexbases!

I don’t know why, but these bases please me, they were the shape used in all of the Rogue Trader rule book example images, they let you ‘rank up’ your units without looking like a fantasy regiment, and I feel they are a woefully forgotten part of gaming. I went along, made a small bend in all the tabs, so they pressure fit into the slots, and got to work texturing the bases;

Starting with a texture paste (usually a pot of AK, but it’s gone missing somewhere in the tower, perils of many projects, so a pot of Astrogranite will do), and mixing with two different types of larger pieces to give a nice ‘rocky’ feel. Yes, the mixing pot is a ketchup pot from a well know food place, and the tools are coffee stirrers, useful materials are everywhere.

With a spray undercoat, we are ready to bring this force into reality! And I’m sure you’re wondering what scheme these pointy eared miscreants will take on, well, looking at the Eldar section of the main rulebook, you get a few suggestions;

The bright red of the Sunblitz Brotherhood, with the sun design looking so much cooler than the pale yellow and blues or the random wavy stripes, but there was nothing showing the rest of the scheme until the Epic 40000 Eldar Legions box set;

There’s a little mistake here, can you spot it boys and girls?

Yes, the images for the Eldar warrior in the Black Sun and Sunblitz entries gave been swapped in printing somehow, and searching for the relevant schemes has had issues because of this, but the infantry description is clear.

Red Helmet (with Sunblitz design). Black Bodysuit. Yellow Accents. This is how my Space Elves shall be adorned, and I also now want to find that style of grav tank in the correct scale. No I am not buying a 3D printer.

No.

I Cantrip into a challenge…

This year saw a trip to Wargames Foundry for Bring Out Your Lead with my regular opponent. Now he has a very nicely painted Rogue Trader Marine Army he decided to show off, and did so to great effect.

This led to the suggestion that we reserve a table for next year and actually play a game of 1st Edition 40k with appropriate army, because of course I had some very old minis in my store of components, but what to actually play, and how to go about it…

Well, my actual start in this life we call gaming actually started during the time of 2nd edition 40K, I have my Eldar army, and to be fair, they are mainly RT era minis anyway, but that wasn’t good enough.

This needs to be very old school. So, Introducing;

RT04 ‘Space Elves’

Not RTB4, that was the original Rhino box (the one that had 3 Rhino’s in for £9.99, yes, you read that correctly). The ‘Space Elves’ line of models didn’t get any box releases, RTB06 was for the Harlequins and RTB17 contained the ‘Eldar Guardians’ when the idea of the Craftworld armies was introduced, but our fun pointy eared space Pirates? Nope. The only Main Book faction to not get a box set, or even any plastic models for them (RTB01 – Plastic Marines, RTB07 for Guard, RTB10 for Squats and RTB13 for Orks!)

So these are the Miniatures I have available to start my journey to a full game with, and while you will see a variety of weapons, and we will go more into that when it comes to pointing up a force, there is one major point of confusion.

If you look at the Citadel Compendiums, those wonderful books full of pictures of old Mini’s of yesteryear, all of these models are liisted as having ‘Shuriken Pistols’. 

Except Shuriken Pistols did not exist in the game at release, all of those weapons that look like a sci-fi crossbow? Those are Shuriken Catapults! What we would now point to and call a shuriken weapon didn’t get its now iconic look until later in the games life, so being the pedant I am, these will be referred to as Catapults.

Now, let’s try to collect a Space Elf force like its 1987, lets see how we are going to paint them… Next time…