Haemonculi Coven Raider

A quick rummage through this blog's archives will present you with the following obvious fact; I jump about between a lot of 40k armies. My brother is quite the opposite. Since just before 5th ed hit, he's been running his ever faithful Salamanders. He's dabbled in a few others (Death Guard, Flesh Tearers) but never strayed far from the power armour.
After he expressed an interest in the idea of a Haemonculi Coven army, I jumped on the chance. After all, I always like the opportunity to face something new across the tabletop. Fusing it with my need for Christmas gift ideas, I produced the following.



Quite expensive for a basic raider if you wanted to replicate this across a whole army, but I do like the way the pile of bodies replacing the sail changes the look of it. I imagine it hovering slowly through mists, Dark Eldar throwing bodies into it to be transported back to the laboratories of Commoragh.



What's a Haemonculi Coven without a Haemonculus? I had this guy left over from the Corpse cart kit, and didn't want him to go to waste. He's obviously a Haemonculus that hasn't yet mastered the art of floating around looking regal.

Magnetic Jetbikes

I've not dabbled with magnets before, but I was given some spares by a friend recently and figured I should put them to use. Magnetically attaching my Reavers to their bases seemed like the optimal choice.

Now, if you've not messed about with the Dark Eldar range personally yet, know that the abominations against sanity otherwise known as flying stands have been redesigned somewhat. They have a ball and socket deal now, which works a lot better. Which is to say, they now work as intended, and hold up the miniature without it spinning wildly in circles or falling over every time you think in it's general direction.

Well, this is the case for the larger vehicles such as Raiders. Reavers don't fair so well (I suspect however that I may have been lax in my pressing together the two halves of the bike with appropriate force duties, so it may be my fault). My jetbikes still suffered from falling over mid battle, so I decided to go with some scenic bases. The magnets enable me to disassemble them for easy transport.



The scenic bases themselves ended up a lot taller than I would perhaps like, but finding scenery bits that are thick enough to support the insertion of a magnet whilst also being the appropriate hight turns out to be difficult, at least within the confines of my own bitz box.

Oh, and in regards to my previous post, I've settled on red.

Probably.

Dark Eldar colour scheme tests

The DE raider is a pretty cool kit. Lots of options, and the guys hanging off the side can be a great source of bits. They're also really useful to use as guinea pigs for colour scheme experiments.

I've been back and forth on how I want my DE to look. I wanted to avoid purple as I have a few purple armies kicking about already. I'd probably avoid green too, as my skaven use that as their main colour. I narrowed it down to the following 3 schemes. All of which are, admittedly, slightly sloppy (bad priming for one) but they should get the idea across.

SCHEME ONE


Pros: Yellow is pretty striking. Yellow is pretty unique as well, so I'm less likely to run into someone else with a similar army.
Cons: Took ages. Painting yellow is a pain and I don't the way I did it looks that good. Painting yellow on the smooth flat vehicles will probably drive me insane.


SCHEME THE SECOND



Pros: Looks the most vibrant of the 3 in real life. Scheme would be very easy to do on vehicles as well as infantry.
Cons: Fairly standard looking DE scheme, perhaps? No distinction between the clothy bits and the armoury bits like there is on the other 2 tests, but I can always play around with that I suppose.

SCHEME C



Pros: Red and black looks suitably evil, I think. Contrasts nicely with the bright hair colours that will be dotted about the army too.
Cons: Very similar to my Dark Elf scheme, if and when I decide to pick them up again. Even with foundation paints, getting a smooth red on vehicles might be a challenge?


Anyway, what do you guys think? Which is your favourite?

Which Wych is which Wych

The festive season descends upon us like an angry Blood Angel, only with less whirring chainswords and more chocolate reindeer.

Speaking of Blood Angels, I took my Dark Eldar for a game against Mr. MCT last week. It was my first time sending them up against anything wearing power armour, so I was curious to see how I'd do. Here are a few things I learned.

Wyches seem to be a solid assault unit. I'll be running 2 units each with a fighty HQ in my 1500 list, and I think this should be a good balance between being able to eat units, but not so powerful I automatically steam roll stuff and get shot to hell next turn. Which is good.

The loss of the Haemonculus really hurts when my transports inevitably begin exploding. However, the main reason I took them out was the H's lack of fleet, which I still think is vital enough to Wyches to be worth the trade off.

I'm liking Razorflails a lot more than I thought I would. I'm tempted to swap out the Hydra Gauntlets for a Flail in each unit.



I'm going up against what I think will be an all-infantry Raven Guard list on Monday. This should be fun, as I've faced mostly mech lists so far. I'm resisting the urge to swap all my Dark Lances for Disintegrator Cannons though. All-comers fo life, yo.