Repositioning the Eldar: A Xenos love story.

A while back, I was given a small (as I thought at that time) Eldar strike force. It started to be an Ulthwe force, painted with those colours, a colour scheme that I like it myself. Recently, I stumbled across them once more. They where sitting in a carton box, 3 years after I moved out of my previous house. Tons and tons of miniatures where sitting there, rolled up in toilette paper (don't ask), just waiting to be unpacked. And in a moment of loneliness, I decided to unpack them and see what's inside the box.

I was overwhelmed.

A box full of miniatures, grav tanks and jet bikes, waiting to be re-modelled and re-assembled. Everything was there: weapon support platforms, a wide range of harlequins, Dire Avengers, Phoenix Lords. And most of them, still in their blisters. But the main problem was the grav tanks and the jet bikes. The majority of those where glued the wrong way, or not glued at all, just stuck together to make a mock up of the tank, just to be used in games. And everything was thrown inside a box of an Eldar Falcon box, mixed up.

So, I took the decision to unpack everything, see what was missing, re-assemble everything, strip what was painted awfully and repaint them. I started with the easy stuff, re-assembling the metal weapon support platforms:

I love the look of those. Pretty good detail, although the Eldar personnel is a little bit static. And metal, that means there is no way of re-positioning those guys.

So, with the easy stuff out of the way, I started to look around for the parts of the grav tanks (an Eldar Falcon and  a Wave Serpent, along with a Vyper and three jet bikes).

Finding the parts for the tanks, was easy enough. I found the schematics, the sprues, (most of them where still uncut). But... I wasn't able to locate the Shuriken Cannon and the canopy for the Vyper. So, I had to improvise. I looked over the two sprues from the grav tanks and found a plethora of spare weapons. So, I salvaged that part of the vehicle. But the canopy was still missing.So... I did this:

I took my small drill and drilled some holes that didn't penetrate the hull of the vehicle. In the finished model, I would make this thing look like it took a burst of rounds right in the face, the canopy was broken and the pilot had to brake it or remove it somehow (just like the pilots in WWII did on their planes), so he could see. Keep in mind here, that the model shown in the picture, was taken apart and re-assembled. In the pictured above, is NOT glued. This is a demonstration of the power of good assembly can do. Always trim and clean your models before applying glue on them.

So, with the Vyper done, it was time to get my hands on the jet bikes. 

A small parenthesis here. All the grav vehicles on the eldar army, come with crystal clear plastic round bases, to give the impression of flying. Those bases were all broken. So I had to make some arrangements. I took the smallest drill I could find, and drilled small holes in them. Then I inserted small steel rods, cut from steel paper clips, to make an effective base. This is the outcome:

I never really liked the rigid look of something so elegant and agile as the Eldar vehicles, so I decided to give them a tilt while on the base. After all they are three in number, and I though it would be cool to make them all look like they are turning together towards an enemy, in squadron formation. The same would apply for the Vyper and the grav tanks as well.

So, after a while, this is a small update on what I was up to. Will a few simple drills and pins, you can give your model a very nice dynamic look. More to come, since this project have only just begun.

Cheers.