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CRUSADE GAME 2 - TAU VS ELDAR Who could have foreseen this? Immediately after successfully fending off an Imperial tank push, the two order-aligned Xenos factions have, inevitably, fallen to their own squabbling. Game 2 for the Crusade saw 500 points of Tau V Eldar on an alarmingly small board. It's fine, neither of us brought much in the way of close combat, which is more than can be said for the Chaos fight that used the board before us. We're probably going to enlarge our standard board size for the rest of these low-points games. Danger close! James brought his guardians and bikes, I brought more infantry and my battlesuit commander with retinue, and at 500 points those elite units really throw their weight around. This one also ended in a victory for my Tau, but a costly one. It seems my stealthsuits crave death, and are granted it gladly, and my ethereal managed to catch a powersword the moment he was done doing his mid-board objective. Both the battlesuits and strike team took a beating, too, though both squads ended up winning things for me by sheer weight of firepower, and a dogged refusal to die. None of these units should be in close combat. Things to take away from this one: massed pulse pistols can, sometimes, make up for the abysmal Tau punching, and I really, REALLY need to make my ethereal a firewarrior bodyguard if I want him to keep doing that 3DP agenda. Don't worry, I have plans. I'll leave you with some shots of James' delightful Ulthwé force, on what turned out to be their final index game! We'll see how it does with a new set of rules and points costs. A commanding presence. Gotta go fast, again.

Hi everyone, I've been working on a project for a few months creating aspect warrior styled wraithlords - because not every soul stone plugged into one of these wraith constructs is going to come from a dead farmer who died in glorious battle, right? Don't get me wrong, I love the vanilla wraith constructs and I think their designs are an absolute classic (as most Eldar designs are - yes I'm biased), but it would be nice to give them a little more flavour for the heroic spiritstones who died while following one of the warrior paths. All of the wraithlords for the main infantry aspect shrines (barring warp spiders and shadow spectres) are already converted and one is completely finished and painted. As such, I'll be posting WIP pics of them from completion of the conversions up to them being fully painted. I may also do a few more for other paths (the afformentioned warp spiders and shadow spectres, but also possibly a ranger wraithlord and who knows what else?), but those will be started somewhere down the line, possibly after I've finished painting the ones I have converted so far. So, to kick things off, here's a group pic of all the converted wraithlords, barring the one that is painted, which was completed last but ironically painted first. From left to right, I have: Vanilla wraithlord with converted double handed sword grip (who is the companion for another modelling project who's already completed and painted - I may post her here, too...) Striking Scorpion wraithlord with converted mandiblasters, chainsword and modified, sneaky pose. Dark Reaper wraithlord with double missile launchers, antenna and double shuriken catapult Dire Avenger wraithlord with handheld shuriken cannon, back-slung wraithsword and telescoped camera Swooping Hawk wraithlord with handheld bright lance, exarch hawk wings backpack and decoractive shoulder guard wingtips, plus landing (or possibly taking off backwards) pose. Howling Banshee wraithlord with double swords, converted head/hair and balancing (hopefully graceful looking) one footed pose. The vanilla, scorpion and banshee wraithlords are based on other people's conversions. I'll update with individual pics of each wraithlord over the coming weeks, starting with the only one not pictured (Fire Dragon) in the next few days. Hope people enjoy them!

I sold off a ton of old models on ebay recently (with more to sell soon). Like any rational adult, I decided to use some of that money to buy a titan. Ended up getting a Revenant because I wasn't sure if the Phantom was too much for me. I've barely started working on it but it's already been a lot of work so I want to keep track of it. To start with, I wanted it standing victoriously over something. I have some vehicles I printed for marines, which is an army I've given up on. Since I don't want to sell models I printed using someone else's designs, I decided to chop up one for the Revenant to be standing on. I wanted to cut this along the red line. Cutting this ended up being harder than I expected. I wanted to clamp it and use a power saw, but I couldn't do that safely so I tried a handsaw which took forever so I gave up. I ended up just pressing it into an orbital sander at an angle. That worked much better (though I ruined 2 sheets of sandpaper, which I'm 100% fine with). The front rail thing broke off when I was sawing it but I can either reattach it or have it in the dirt nearby, whatever I think works better. I built this foot on the top of the wreck (though it isnt glued on yet) so that the heel and toe would fit better on the uneven surface, but I honestly don't think that mattered at all. I only used super glue (not epoxy) due to the small size of the connector bits so I hope that holds. But to be honest this whole model doesn't weigh that much so I think it should be fine. This is where I left off last night. I pinned the shin to the foot with 1/8" brass rod which is probably overkill but that seems fine. Very glad I got a nice pen drill last year, I hate drilling resin by hand! I'm hoping to build the other leg (to stand flat on the ground beside the wreck) tonight, if I have time.

So, I thought that I would give an insight into (the pretentiously labelled) "Kage-verse" when it comes down to the Craftworld Eldar. This will be the basis for my idiosyncratic Craftworld for my mini painting (hopefully that will go well), so not a waste either way, but when it comes to the setting this is my basis for the Eldar as a whole that you can tweak to fit the established, canonical Craftworlds. This is probably going to be more bulletpoints/thumbnails until I get to seriously write it up. (It seems that my little supplement was more fragmentary than I recalled!) Inspiration: Peter F. Hamilton. The Reality Dysfunction. Edenist habitats CRAFTWORLD SOCIETY/GOVERNMENT The society of the Craftworlds is a strange hybrid of a number of distinct cultures and sub-cultures forced together as a result of the The Fall. Three major parts of society/government: Ancestor [The Past]. Eldar that have suffered death of the physical form. They transfer into the Infinity Circuit with full consciousness and can act individually for as long as they have the will to do so. Clan [The Present]. These are elective organisations drawing Eldar with similar ideologies and goals. They can be kin-based, but this is the exception rather than the norm. Clan leadership is exclusively derived from those indiviuals who have returned from following the Path of the Outcast. Seer [The Future]. Formed from a combination of the esoteric disciplines. Farseers are separate/advisory, *not* the leaders? Others to include: The Court of Khaine. Kaela Mensha Khaine (Shard; Infinity Circuit) The Young King [Ancestor; ceremonial] The Blood King [Clan; "Autarch"] The Blood Sage [Seer] Other Courts? THE PATH (Ai'elethra) There are five (5) Paths to the Eldar Path: Seer. Development of estoric abilities. Warrior. Development of martial abilities. Steward. Servants to society. Seeker. Explorers of science, art, and the esoteric. Outcast [Eshairr]. Those that fight the constraints of the Path. This differs from canonical treatments where everything is described as a Path. The difference is the use of terminology for older materials, e.g. WD 127, which describes "Ways". Herein, "Ways" are subdivisions of each Path, e.g. the discipline expressed through the "Howling Banshee" is a Way on the Path of the Warrior. The significance here is that an individual can become trapped on a Way OR a Path, with the former being more common than the latter: * Way-sworn. Individuals that have become trapped on a single Way, e.g. Exarchs of a single Temple. * Path-sworn. Individuals that are trapped on a Path, but cycle between the Ways. The wonderful thing about this structure, based on the original background, is that you don't have to invent some nonsense "Path of Command". Autarchs are, for all intents and purposes, Path-sworn Exarchs. (The selected Autarch would likely carry the term "Blood King" or "Blood Queen" if the gendered route is taken.) Thinking More on Outcasts Outcasts must necessarily forgo the protections of the Path. What are those protections? Compartmentalisation of the mind so that the Eldar focuses on the development of a number of related skills/abilities (Primary Abilities). They may readily access Secondary Abilities, or supporting skills that are otherwise not developed on any given Path/Way (as therein defined). Other skills/abilities that are not relevant are locked behind the construct of the Path and are more difficult to access. Outcasts, on the other hand, allow the breakdown of these barriers. <-- Need some way of representing this. (C.f. corruption from GURPS Horror?) TECHNOLOGY Previously I had taken the route that the Eldar had mundane technology to which they added estoric technologies ("warpcraft"). I'm no longer sure about this and would love to discuss the possibilities with learned people of the 40k lore! For example, previously I had Wraithbone as a nanopolymer (based on the literal definition of "psychoplastic") but should I lean towards the "fantasy" interpretation, i.e. psychically malleable energy (or the equivalent of ectoplasm)? This then became a channel for esoteric energies. The long-run idea is to avoid the notion that the Eldar can create matter and are functionally a post-singularity culture that is devoid of resource requirements. Unless they are...? * * * There's a whole bunch of stuff not covered here. I thought that I would throw it out there in case something jarred inappropriately, or there were some possibly better (and newer) interpretations out there that would need to be synthesised into the broader whole etc. Looking forward to the (hopefully) discussion!