Grey Knights and Dark Eldar.
And I expect the Necron templates to start showing up any day now. Releases that have gotten everyone I know pretty
darn excited. Well, Matt was really
excited about the Blood Angels, but the rest of us weren’t. Especially when he had the gall to start using
those new rules with his army...
Anyway, I wanted to prattle on real quick about the Dark
Eldar. A lot of my friends and I had
dozens of Dark Eldar sitting around, The
older, straight-backed ones that came with the third edition set. And many of us had tried--really tried--to
make a solid army out of them.
It never worked.
Yeah, I’ve seen the mathhammers and win-crazy guys
argue that the old Dark Eldar worked fine as long as you make this list
and do this and get these rolls.
Personally, I’ve always thought that any codex which only offers one viable
army list is a failure. That’s why I
can’t wait for the new Chaos Legions Codex.
But I digress...
Here’s the cool thing.
The new Dark Eldar Kabalite sprue comes with tons of extras. Two heavy weapons, two special weapons, and
enough options for two or three different Archons. Plus extra heads, knives, blades... tons of
good stuff. It is, in all fairness to
Games Workshop, a spectacular set. You
can make ten Dark Eldar from the set and still have enough arms and heads for
six more warriors.
So... guess what?
All the new arms fit on the old bodies. No problems, no tweaks, nothing. Take a pair of clippers to the head and
carefull snip off the ball that fits in the neck socket--now those fit on the
old bodies, too. Alternately, use a
sharp knife and a drill to make a tiny socket for the head. And the spare back accessories like the flag,
trophy rack, or grenade launchers? Just
file down that little nub and they’ll glue onto an old body just fine. You can even use some of those extra daggers
for more detail. Essentially, it you’ve
got those older bodies—you know, the one everyone was selling for pennies on
the dollar or dumping in their bitz bins—you can get sixteen Dark Eldar out of
each Kabalite ten pack. And once they’re
mixed in, they’re pretty much identical.
This photo is three Dark Eldar. An
all-new Kabalite. One old body with new
arms, head, and accessories. One’s an old warrior with just his head replaced.
You can also use the old splinter cannons, too. I put matching blades on both the old and new
cannon as an additional link-up between them.
With that and the overhand grip it’s pretty obvious they’re the same
weapon. Add on one of the new heads and
it looks great.
Your old Raiders can get dressed up the same way. Again, two easy head swaps and a dagger make
the crew match your shiny new army.
Spare chains, blades, spikes, rifles--they all go on with no real
problem. I like to say my
archaic-looking Raider is Urien Rakarth’s personal transport, but it would also
work for any senior Dark Eldar--an Archon or a group of Trueborn, for example.
Speaking of which, I also used the new Kabalite Warriors to
make an all-plastic Archon for the army.
I used the Drachon helmet and trophy rack on a body with a splinter
pistol and power sword. Then I used the
skull-cape from the Fantasy Chaos Marauder sprue. All I needed to do was cut the very bottom
point off the trophy rack and file the
center of the cape a tiny bit to make a deeper "drape" in it. I glued a
plastic dagger in front to match the metal (now Finecast) Archon, and also
added some skulls-on-chains from the new Raider sprue. A few tiny notches and pits in the sword will
make it a fine huskblade once it’s got a
bone paintjob.
The old bodies also made for fine Wyches. I’m not too sure I’m going to use Wyches in
my army, to be honest, but I figured I had the bodies so why not. A few of the old Dark Eldar torsos are
definitely female, and some of the leg sets have a bit of motion to them. Bend them a bit and you’ll get even more. And the old sets already come with the
double-bladed punch dagger. Some of the
heads are leftover Kabalaite ones. Some
of them are from fantasy High Elves, I think (I found them in the bitz bin at
my local store). And a few are from my
friend Jeff who bought two boxes of Wyches for himself. The Hexatrix’s shoulderpad was from a
Hellions set my lovely lady got me for my birthday.
And while we’re on the subject, lets talk Beastmasters. All metal?
Dear God, a squad of these guys and their beasts will run you fifty
bucks, minimum, and could hit $200. For
one squad! Just use Hellions for
Beastmasters. That’s what I’ve
done. You’ll get five of them to a pack,
and half of the Hellion heads already have monstrous-looking rebreathers on
them. Leave off the shoulder pads so
they’re showing more skin, add some body paint, and they’ll be fine
Beastmasters. You can trim the blades
off the hellglaive and just say it’s a big spear or animal-prod. You could also add on a few Kroot or Ogre accessories
so these guys can have random chunks of meat hanging from their belts.
I love the Clawed Fiend, but for a single model it’s just
too expensive (money vs points). I dug
around in the bits bins at my local store and came up with the body and tail of
a Fantasy Cold One (also available at BitzBarn). I happened to have some of the old Cold One heads,
so look at that. Add on some Tyranid
armor plates, an unusual color scheme, and I’ve got an alien velociraptor with
a collar. If that’s not a fine stand-in
for a Clawed Fiend, I don’t know what is.
You can pay $15 apiece for Khymera or around $25 will get
you ten Dire Wolves, which look like big zombie dogs. You can even buy them individually online
(BitzBarn again). Replace their tongue
and tail with Skaven tails, give them an alien paint scheme, and they’ll make
for a fine pack of beasties. Or just use
them as is and tell your opponents the Beastmaster got them from Space Wolf
nightmares.
Alternatively, there’s also a mention of “blade-legged
Helspiders” in the Beastmaster entry, and there are tons and tons of spider
models kicking around the Games Workshop lines.
Some of the larger goblin ones would make great counts-as Khymera (fast
scuttling spiders could rate an invulnerable save). Or, if you’ve got smaller spiders, you could
also say the Helspiders are counts-as Razorwings. They are blade-legged, after all.
For my own Razorwings, I used some old plastic bats I’ve had
kicking around for years. I think
they’re from Warhammer Quest or something like that. I altered the angles and heights a bit for
variety and gave them another alien paintjob, trimming the wings and claws with
boltgun and mithril.
Oh, and last but not least... pain tokens. I saw a very cool article on the GW site
about using piles of skulls or brass tubing and helmets. All awesome if you can afford it. I just used old Skeleton shields from the
fantasy line. They’re pretty much tokens
already, and they’re marked with one skull, two crossed bones, or a skull and
crossbones (three). I dug up over a
dozen of them, which means I can use them as either individual markers or
accumulated counters.
So, tons of stuff for about $70 worth of new Dark Eldar
(thank you, Neil at the WarStore) and a bunch of stuff I got for maybe $10 from
the bits bins of my local store.
And sometime soon you’ll get to see my all-plastic Grotesques
and Wracks.
