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:

Grotesque Genus: Options for Converting Dark Eldar Grotesques

EDIT: I updated this article on 12/28/2016 with a new options and some more pics, and I'll try to continue to keep it updated as it's one of the most popular posts here.

Anyone familiar with the Dark Eldar scene knows that there is one big, burning question from anyone with eyes, limited funds, and even a passing sense of aesthetic rigour.

What am I going to use to convert Grotesques?

"But," I hear you saw, "GW already HAS a model for Grotesques."

Yes, that is true, but the thing is expensive, statically-posed, lacking on additional bits, and, well, UTTERLY GROTESQUE!

I that way I guess it's perfect for representing the unit that it is meant to, but I certainly cannot respectfully field that "Breakdancing Bigfoot"(TM someone brilliant who isn't me) in my army—particularly when I put so much work into converting so many of my models.

Coven Wyches Conversions - Nurses

I take this whole making a coven version of every unit in the codex thing seriously.

What's more, I'm not a fan of just slapping a tentacle or a atrophied talos arm on something and calling it a coven unit. For that reason, I still think I could have done better with the following unit of wyches. However, I'm not a huge fan of Wyches, particularly now that they've been depowered, so I figured I should just get this unit done with and move on.

An Open Love Letter to Independent Retailers

So I failed at Flesh Friday this week, and I'll be sharing the following as a FLASHBACK Friday post instead :)

This is something that's been sitting in my drafts for a long time. I'm not sure why I never posted it back when it was current, but I'd like to share it now in the hope that someone somewhere might learn something from it about the value of independent retailers.

It's a lesson that can be carried over to far more than Games Workshop/Model retailers. I've applied similar logic to my book purchasing. I only buy books from my local shop these days. Never from Amazon.

Anyway. Enough preaching. Here it is. I hope you can empathize :)

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You have all, of course, been talking about it for years: how your FLGS's have been closing up shop and moving on: how discount online retailing is dropping long-ranged, SCUD missiles on the Mom-and-Pops.

Well, yesterday I woke up. I opened my ears and finally listened as I drove by my local independent model retailer from my teenage years and discovered that it was gone.

Here's the letter that I sent through to the email address listed on their site (which I pray is still active):

Figuring Out Paint Schemes

When trying to decide on a paint scheme for my coven force, I knew that I wanted one that would be pretty light, almost white, because I wanted there to be lots of contrast when I elected to splash them up with some blood.

I wasn't really sure how I was going to do it until I cracked open the Haemonculus Covens books and spotted the following:

It was the colour scheme for the Hex, and it was PERFECT.

Coven Mandrakes

Well, with it being Halloween and all, I thought I'd share something particularly horrific from my work on my coven: Mandrakes!

Once I'd found a suitably horrific solution for the Cronos, I had the itch to replicate this hideous treatment for Cronos parasites in other places in my army. I see the Cronos as kind of vacuums/generator for the whole coven. They are black holes into which souls/spirits pour, and they store the energy for the coven. I wanted them to have a pretty central role in the coven, so, if one gets destroyed, there needs to be a fresh supply of replacements.

Enter the idea of including nascent parasites, which are being groomed and grown to one day assume their roles as full-fledged engines. When looking for a role that I could rep with a baby Cronos, the Mandrake was the most obvious ones for me, particularly now that they seem to be stealth DEATH machines with the new 'dex.

It Will Not Die (The Return of Flesh Friday)

Phenomenal Nid Conversion Bits

I'm still out in the black, and all of GW's recent foolishness seems to be keeping me soured to the hobby (I was shown a COMPLETED shot of a new, plastic Eldar jetbike by someone in the studio in 2006 or 2007, and yet the recent Eldar release still features the same plastic bikes that we've had for more than 15 years. The company is clearly in it for the money and not for the models.), but this simply MUST BE SHARED with Nid players.

Get. This. (Genestealer Cult Rules)

Kids,

I'm still out in stasisland, but I wanted to make sure no one missed the opportunity to download this new rules set from the Tempus Fugitives for the updcoming Second Tyrannic War Campaign. Sure, they are only house rules, but since I've always been a fan of the Cult, I eagerly collect any and all semi-official Genestealer rules documents.

What's more, in the current age of Games Workshop's Oppressive Online Regime (maybe I'll write more on that later, but it is the prime reason for my existential ennui when it comes to The Hobby these days), I don't doubt The Company will be seeking to get these rules taken down, whether they are for an independent event or not. Thus, you should grab them while they are grab-able.

Here's a link to the event page:
http://tabletopnation.simpletix.com/Event/16/WH40000-Second-Tyrannic-War-18/

Here's a link to the campaign document/experimental ruleset:
http://www.tempusfugitives.co.uk/pdf/40k/2TW%20Pack.pdf

How to Sculpt Miniatures 5: How to make spines/Spinal Columns (Video tutorial)

Folks had requested that I expand my How to Sculpt Miniatures Series into a video format (hence the "(V)") so that they could watch me apply the kinds of stuff I wrote about in the articles. This was a somewhat-hurried first attempt that PinkPonny and I shot the other day.