Warhammer 40,000: Let's Paint Space Elves

At this, the heart of Fulbra sank within him; for he had heard numerous tales of Uccastrog in bygone years; and the tales were not such as would reassure a stranded traveler. Uccastrog, which lay far to the east of Cyntrom, was commonly known as the Isle of the Torturers; and men said that all who landed upon it unaware, or were cast thither by the seas, were imprisoned by the inhabitants and were subjected later to unending curious tortures whose infliction formed the chief delight of these cruel beings.

 - Clark Ashton Smith, the Isle of the Torturers

I had my eye on a Dark Eldar Voidraven bomber for quite a while. I don't know why I want to build one, but I do; I just think it looks cool, like a GI Joe plane that you'd have fondly looked at at the toy store as a kid but that was way too expensive. Perhaps it isn't a coincidence, because at some point I realized that the actual GI Joe aircraft the Voidraven looks like is the Night Raven, which appears in one of my favorite stories, Showdown! So if I just paint the Voidraven in Cobra colors, all of a sudden I also have a color scheme for my Dark Eldar. I'm calling the bomber the Hospitality of the Isle of Uccastrog.

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Technically, this does not count as starting a new army! Because I already own a box of Dark Eldar Wyches from who knows how long ago. I have no recollection whatsoever of buying them. I also picked up an, ahem, Dark Side space elf Kabalite Champion from the good folks at Wargame Exclusive as part of another order; she will be joining us as the Succubus Ilvaa. Wargame Exclusive were clearly getting in on the GW trend of ludicrously high bases, so I made Ilvaa stand on a random pile of skulls I had lying around instead.

Since I have all these ladies, clearly I'm making a Wych Cult detachment. What with the colors and everything, I think I'm calling them the Cult of the Venom Dreaming. The bomber can also be a Wych Cult plane, so I think this is a winner.

The Kabalite Champion is a lovely model, and my painting skills can't do it any kind of justice. I stuck a marine pistol holster to her thigh just in case I want to actually use the model and someone decides to be an asshole about WYSIWYG, and also because I thought it looked kinda cool. Anyway here she is.

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While I was waiting for my bomber to show up, it occurred to me that I have another model I was planning to use as an Eldar character: Lupita Love from Raging Heroes. Here she is as Harlequin Solitaire Jolenta, from the Masque of the Dying Sun.

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Then it's on to the Voidraven! I'm delighted to find that the crew of two can be easily livened up a little with some conversion parts.

By the way, surely that should be bombardiere rather than artigliere in the Italian. I started with the pilot, who was a bit boring, but it was easy enough to swap in a Wych torso and a Brother Vinni head.

Meanwhile, magnetizing the missile pods was fairly easy.

I also magnetized the bomb, by the fairly simple expedient of cutting off the tab in the bomb bay and sticking a magnet on it, and slipping a thinner magnet inside the bomb casing.

It fits quite snugly.

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So I had the fuselage well underway, but I liked that Kabalite Champion model so much, I decided to get another one and convert her into my bombardier. This involved repositioning her legs, using the arms from the original bombardier model, and a new Statuesque bionic head.

The pose is quite something, and I feel like this was a very succesful conversion.

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Unfortunately, after this succesful crew conversion came the hard part. The main fuselage is made up of two big, complicatedly contoured parts, and of course they don't fit together properly. This bit of the instructions is not as easy as it looks.

Getting the two fuselage halves to stick together took some strenuous efforts with clamps and some superglue where plastic cement just wasn't good enough. Not an experience I would care to repeat.

I have to admit that after the clamps came off and some filler went into the gaps, the model sat on my shelf for quite a while. Then, though, the Dark Eldar DLC came out for Gladius, and I decided it was high time to finish this damn model! So I stuck on the wings and finished the underside.

This is my first attempt at a symbol for the Venom Dreaming and an army badge for my Eldar.

I also inscribed the name of the aircraft and the cult on it, but kept the overall paint job quite simple, with Black Grey as the main color, Royal Purple highlights and Deep Green text.

No way am I taking any closeups!

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And so the Voidraven is finally done. It was a bit of a miserable build, to be honest, although I'm quite proud of my bombardier conversion. I'm still very much enjoying actually finishing models I've started, so with apologies to my friendly neighborhood game store, I may keep this not buying new models thing up next year as well...