1 November 2020

Xenos on Crusade: James' Craftworld Eldar - Part 4

It's been a while, huh.

Hobby burnout hit me rather hard last month, and as a result, I made very little progress on my models. Rather than ship out a half-hearted post detailing my hobby failings, I figured I'd wait and get a few more models completed for the Craftworld. 

As I mentioned, September was a real struggle for me in terms of hobby. I started on the Wraithblades with the best of intentions, but very quickly I found myself losing all impetus and decided the best approach was to take a break, reset, and come back when I felt the desire to paint again. It took about a month, but once the hobby drive was there I cracked back on, and now, two months from my last post, what have I managed to get done in that time frame?

When I left off at the end of August, I'd just begun to start work on a unit of Wraithblades to finish off the "core" of my Eldar army. However, progress on the unit rapidly stalled out after the update, and I was left looking at a set of half-painted legs with no motivation to continue; I'd well and truly run into the solid brick wall of hobby burnout. 

I think a combination of painting effectively the same model multiple times, as well as a lack of game opportunities, lead me to become quite disenfranchised with Warhammer as a whole. I didn't really want anything to do with the hobby, as I didn't see much of a point in painting if I wasn't getting to do anything with the models. For me, the best thing to do was step away from the hobby until I found the motivation to get painting again.

In the end, I did no real hobby for another few weeks. It turned out this was exactly what I needed, and once the painting bug hit again, I was rearing to get back to it. I managed to knock out the rest of the Wraithblades in a week and a half, a real record for me! You can see the finished models below.


As you can see, they're effectively miniaturised versions of my Wraithlord, which is something I find quite funny. I didn't want to push the boat out too far for these guys. After all, they are meant to be one of the more "basic" units in my force, so that meant sticking to the tried and true paint scheme with a few of the additional pieces for the Wraithblades added on, like the head crest and additional armour plates. I once again elected to paint the swords in my "ghost" style to keep the visual consistency across the army. I think it's something I'll keep to characters and any other wraith units, just to help the weapons stand out as being psychically charged. 


The only significant work I did on the models themselves was to reverse the sword grip on two of the models. I wanted my Wraithblades to possess a bit of personality; some kind of hint at who they were in a former life. I figured that having two models hold the blade in a reverse grip could have indicated them as perhaps being Howling Banshees, or another Eldar blade master before they were reborn as a Wraith-Construct. Overall, I'm thrilled with the end product, even if it did take far longer than expected to get there!



With the Wraithblades done, I wanted to take a break from the Wraith Host and paint something a bit more "classically" Eldar. For me, that took the form of an Autarch. 


This is another one of the fantastic plastic characters that GW have released for the Eldar, and I was really excited to get painting him. I'm really proud of the Spritseer and Farseer models I painted, so was hoping to get the Autarch to a similar standard as a real centrepiece for the army. 


Paint scheme-wise, it was nice and simple to do, as there's nothing on this model that I haven't already painted. It was just a case of planning out where to start! I wanted to keep some elements consistent with the Farseer; I reasoned that the Eldar, being the extravagant souls that they are, would mark out their leaders not by specific battle markings, but with a silk sash or a finely crafted Soul Stone. Therefore, I've painted the Autarch's sash in the same style as the Farseer's, as well as running a line of yellow around his cape in a similar fashion. Not only does it denote them as commanders of my force from a lore perspective, but it'll also help me to pick them out on the tabletop. 


When painting the model, I realised that there would be a few standout areas that I'd have to put the work in on. The first was understandably his helmet. Nothing helps a character stand out quite like an elaborate helmet, and boy does the Autarch have one of those. 


I wanted to push the soft blue hues in the white, so I spent a bit more time slowly glazing on the shades to really emphasise shadows and colour transitions. I think, when combined with the alternating purple/white "feathers" in the crest, it all works really nicely together. As well as the helmet, the wings adorning the Autarchs jump pack also serve to catch the eye, and so again I spent a bit more time working on the shadows and defining edges. There are a few messy spots that I need to go back and clean up, but as I'm learning white is an evil colour and shows up even the smallest mistakes. 


In summary, I'm thrilled with the outcome of this model, and I'm looking forward to getting him onto the table along with the rest of my army. With the Autarch done, this actually marks the first 50PL that I've completed for this force; something of a milestone for me! I love the overall visual the army has, and seeing it all come together now is motivating me to get the last models painted up and completed. 

Over the next month, I'll be looking to add some Aspect Warriors for my Autarch to lead onto the battlefield. The first unit of these will be in the form of a squad of Dire Avengers, which will serve as a nice break from painting up the Ghost Warriors as well as allowing me to work with some new paints. Alongside that, I'll be aiming to at last finish the original box of Craftworld models that started this project, by painting up my second Wraithlord. With that, I'll have completed a majority of my Eldar models and will be closing in on the endgame. I'm looking forward to it!

Until next time,

James

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