Haemonculus Coven Display Board for Armies on Parade (Flesh Friday)

So, as is usually the case, I realized on about September 14th that Games Workshop's in-store Armies On Parade event was happening in a month. This, really, should be the one event that is marked on my calendar and I work towards all year. I don't actually play that much 40k, and mostly do all this conversion and painting work as a means of seeing a concept through to actual models. If I inspire some folks along the way, or encourage them to try to do more with their models, we'll that's great.

But Armies on Parade is pretty much the best possible place to showcase the kind of work I do. 

However, I always realize it's coming up late in the game, and don't have enough ready in time, and blah blah blah.

This year is different.

Haemonculus Venom Coven Conversion (Flesh Friday)

So, in case you're new around these parts, or I haven't talked about it enough, my main goal for my Haemonculus Coven of the Unmarred force is to create a converted, Haemonculus version of every non-haemonculus unit in the Dark Eldar Codex.

A long, long time ago, in a country far, far away, I came up with a concept for a Haemonculus Raider:

It's mostly a Raider with some gribly bits attached, and a Talos as its engine, and I'd played with the idea of having some spidery arms growing out of the middle of it for carrying its passengers. However, it never really worked for me, so I left the spidery arms off.

I've since given more thought to the Haemonculus Raider concept, and the idea of having passengers suspended from it on some kind of meat hooks, and when I make my revised concept for it, it's going to look a lot like this Coven Venom

Converted Dark Eldar Wracks complete (Flesh Friday)

 Well, I've officially polished off the first part of my November modeling vow by completing the conversions and sculpting on my first unit of Wracks since the Bob's Big Bad Coven commission.

This time I opted to use arms that were much more to scale with the models (last time I used mostly big, beefy, and LONG bloodletter arms), and I'm much happier with the effect. I also used mostly actual wracks arms (though sometimes converted) along with actual wrack masks to mask the fact that I'm using flagellant lower bodies and bloodletter upper bodies to sub in for the actual wrack models. I also sculpted on some combat cumberbuns to merge the two pieces/tie them back to the actual wracks.

Why go to so much work, employing bits across to many different stock models?

October Modeling Vow Complete (Flesh Friday)

Though it's the case that I didn't finish this modeling vow IN October, it is the case that I MADE the vow on something like October 16th, so I'll call that a victory.

On that day, I vowed to my Dark Kin on The Dark City forum that, come end of October, I would have finished:

- Building and converting my first squad of Grotesques
- Painting a 10-man squad of Kabalite Hunters
- Painting 1 Haemonculus
- Painting 5 Mandrake Cronos Parasites
- Painting 1 Cronos Parasite Engine
- Painting 3 Reavers

Here are the results:

Haemonculus from Cephalyx Overlords conversion (Flesh Friday)

As soon as I saw these guys, I thought they'd make perfect Haemonculi.

In the fluff I've created for the Coven of the Unmarred, one of my main juxtapositions/weird and hideous bits of creative reasoning is that the Coven is obsessed with perfection. Well, at least the Coven's master Haemonculi/Coven Archon are. It's a kind of pyramid scheme, I guess, wherein the Dark Eldar at the highest level of Coven get to be pretty (or "unmarred") because of all the hideous experiments that have been attempted on the twisted creatures beneath them.

Raid Spoils: Coven Clawed Fiend and Urghul

I'm a member over on the All-Dark-Eldar message board, the Dark City, and every christmas they run a Christmas Raid. It's kind of like Secret Santa for the Dark Kin: each participant pledges to give a model-related gift of $20 value or more, and each participant makes a request for something they'd like in their army.

When I drew my "victim" for the raid, he had requested Clawed Fiends or Coven stuff, so I thought this was the perfect excuse to complete my proof of concept model for a feral Grotesque to represent a Clawed Fiend in an all-coven force. As I detailed in my previous post, I used a Vargheist/Crypt Horror as a basis for it, added in some Talos bits and a Nagash spine, some Greenstuff, and—BOOM—Grotesque Fiend:

It Will Not Die (The Return of Flesh Friday)