Eldar Dire Avengers

The Eldar were my very first 40K army. That was 30 years ago. I sold them all off about 25 years ago. For $40. Canadian. Still kicking myself. In reality it was probably only a few dozen of those original Rogue Trader era Guardians, a Lascannon and crewman, a Wraith Lord or two, and maybe a couple jet bikes...?

(Well okay, now that I did think about it, I did have that very first box set of plastic Space Marines... but that, and a metal marine with a chainsword and a robotic arm were the only things I ever had from them and I sold them off pretty quickly... The Eldar were the first ones I recall wanting to have an entire army of and coming up with backstory for them and all that stuff).

I did keep my Harlequins for some reason... (but not the Harlequin jet bike - dammit - STILL kicking myself!)

Anyway, over the years I've been putting together a small Eldar infantry force of those old Rogue trader minis - plus a few of the aspect warriors that came in the later editions. If you search far enough through the older posts you can find one or two painted - from when I had an idea for a paint scheme. I've been back and forth on how to paint them for years... At times I wanted to paint them all in different colours - like pirates - no uniform! Other times I've tried out other schemes, weird camouflage or just different colours, but was never really happy with them. Recently I've kind of settled on some colours, but I just haven't had the time to paint them - as I've been working on Imperial Guard forces.

I recently decided to crank out a squad of Dire Avengers and part of a squad of Guardians to possibly use as a Kill Team in Shadow War: Armageddon (and to try out the general paint scheme and see if I actually like it..). I think I'll probably try and work a few squads in here and there over the next year - between squads of Tallarn - just to take a break from all the tans and browns.



Dire Avenger Squad - Miniatures are from Games Workshop - though these are all long out of print.

I have two more Dire Avenger squads like this. I'm going to do them in the classic blue body armour, but have different coloured helmets (I think the other two squads might be yellow and light blue...?). I decided to paint different coloured plumes mostly just to identify who was who in Shadow War: Armageddon...

The Guardians I'm painting are in grey body armour. Again the plan is to paint different squads with different coloured helmets. I have about three quads worth - though some are carrying weird stuff like lasguns and meltaguns - stuff Eldar aren't supposed to have anymore.... Ah well...

The rest of the Aspect Warriors will be in a rainbow of colours - red Warp Spiders, orange Fire Dragons (though I think I'm one or two shy of a squad), yellow Howling Banshees (Though I gave all mine to The Girl - when I get some replacements!), green Striking Scorpions, blue Dire Avengers, and purple Swooping Hawks. I don't have any Reapers, but I think I'd go with classic black for them, should I ever acquire some.

What I'm not sure about are the Rangers, Farseer, Warlocks, and Wraith Lords... Rangers in some sort of camouflage? Farseer and Warlocks...? I think I might go with brown/grey earthy tones (like the Guardians?). I have three Warith Lords... Maybe green, purple and orange...? I don't know... Not like I'm painting them next week and need to decide NOW, I guess...


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

The Guardians? They're about half done - I've got a bit of painting done while "watching" season one of West World with Amanda over the weekend when my head wasn't feeling so bad.

Or maybe a game report - Amanda said she'd play Shadow War: Armageddon with me later this evening... might still happen, the night is young...

I've also been working on some more cavern terrain. I'd hoped to make a bit more headway today, but then had a bit of a disaster to deal with...



The Girl went to get some bread of the cupboard to have for breakfast and they all came falling down on top of her! Don't worry, she's OKAY! She was pretty shaken by the ordeal, but luckily crawled out from under the wreckage (more or less) unscathed. The fellow I know who built and installed them will be here tomorrow to sort it all out (I think he was pretty horrified when I told him - says nothing like that's happened in all the years he's been building cabinets). Just one more bit of stress in my life that I didn't really need right now, though...

The really sad bit about the whole affair is that the cabinet that totally fell down on The Girl had all the bowls in it and there were a bunch of bowls that are really... irreplaceable... I mean, it's not like they were early Ming Dynasty or anything. Most were handthrown bowls made by potters that we bought at different times in our lives that had a certain sentimental value. My grandmother collected teacups wherever she went, we've collected bowls and mugs - except not mass produced printed ones, hand made unique ones. A few were even made by Amanda when she was interested in pottery - including a few small bowls she make for the kids when they were very small... They all came pouring out of the cupboard and completely shattered on the fancy new countertop (which, by the way, looks completely unscathed - granite is hard AF!).



Ah well, they're just things, I guess...