Aspect Wraithlord project

[CancelledApocalypse]

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!

[Magos Takatus]

Very nice. I considered doing some conversions like this a long time ago but I never got round to it. Could you provide any close-ups please?

[CancelledApocalypse]

4 hours ago, Magos Takatus said:

Very nice. I considered doing some conversions like this a long time ago but I never got round to it. Could you provide any close-ups please?

Sure! And thanks :)

 

First up is the Banshee Wraithlord, unprimed and primed. She was the first of the conversions I completed. The pose is pretty much a straight up copy of zzerogravitas's double sworded wraithlord over on reddit, but I added hair to mine and will paint her with the loin cloth thingy, too. Paint scheme will be a mix of the classic Howling Banshee and the Iybraesil craftworld schemes, so blue, bone and white, with red hair and dark green touches here and there.

 

The idea with all these conversions is that in general they'd still be useable on the tabletop, though obviously with this one the two swords are not a viable weapons choice. Maybe I could write some homebrew rules for them? Dunno, really.

[Captain Coolpants]

I wanted to do something like this myself because I have a thing for wraithlord lol. But I never got around to it. 

[Brother Tyler]

I am looking forward to seeing the fruits of this project.

[CancelledApocalypse]

Cheers guys!

 

17 hours ago, Captain Coolpants said:

I wanted to do something like this myself because I have a thing for wraithlord lol. But I never got around to it. 

That seems to be a common sentiment, lol

 

Next up is the Dire Avenger, again, unprimed and primed. Paint scheme will be mixed Dire Avenger and everyone's favourite shuriken heavy craftworld, Biel Tan. Not quite sure how I'll mix the schemes, but I may just literally half and half the model with warpstone glow/Kantor blue separated by diagonal line, and have a white head with blue/green/white crest. If these wraithlords end up looking like racing cars, I won't be unhappy with that, lol.

 

This conversion is a bit simpler than the Banshee conversion, though it was a bit of work getting that sword to attach to the back and look okay. The shoulder mounted camera was really easy with some old bits from an ebay bits lot and a blob of green stuff - I think the 'camera' is from an old metal Falcon>Fire Prism conversion kit and the post support is from a wraithseer's staff. Similarly, the Avenger style sight on the shuriken cannon came from bits from the wraithfighter and (I think) Wraithknight kits. They replaced the top-mounted shuriken clip, which was moved from the top of the gun to the underside.

 

I wanted a more relaxed/at ease pose for this wraithlord, which also fortunately meant I didn't need to hack up the arms and legs at all. I thought about giving this one a long-ish half-cloak over the right arm, but in the end decided against it. I'm still on the fence a bit, though, and may add that before I start painting. We'll see.

[CancelledApocalypse]

The Striking Scorpion wraithlord is next, and is one of my favourites. The pose is stolen from crimson_badger, another redditer. It took a lot of fiddly work to get the positioning of the legs right, though in terms of time spent on any of the conversions, the chainsword probably takes that prize by some margin. It's a cut down and heavily sanded imperial knight reaper chainsword replacing most of the standard wraithlord's sword, with some extra greenstuff design work. I'm not much of a sculpter, so it's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with the way it came out.

 

In terms of paint scheme, I think I'm going to mix the scorpion theme with Yme Loc, so an acid green, trollslayer orange and some kind of muted grey. At the moment, I'm not at all sure how I'm going to go about doing that, but it'll be fun working it out (hopefully!).

[Magos Takatus]

Thank you for the close up images! It's a lot easier to see them. I really like the Scorpion one in particular. 

[CancelledApocalypse]

No problem, and thanks! I'll keep uploading one wraithlord a day until they're done, then there'll probably be big gaps between getting them actually painted.

[CancelledApocalypse]

The Dark Reaper aspect is up, this one has a dual missile launcher to simulate the dual reaper launchers the exarchs (used to?) carry. I didn't want wrist mounted weapons due to the pose of the supporting arm, but I did want the extra weapon option as I'm trying to keep these wraithlords as tabletop useable as possible, so I decided to give this one extra shurikens in keeping with the aspect. As one of the shoulder mounts was now sporting a reaper-style antenna, I decided on a twin shuriken mounted on the other shoulder.

 

In terms of conversions, the dual missile was fairly easy to make with a bit of greenstuff, the head has the hair of a witch aelf and the side attachments are just the forearm decorations from the wraithlord kit. The antenna is from the fire prism - again picked up in a bits lot. It was all pretty simple to convert, beyond the posing of the legs.

 

I've decided to go for an Altansar paint scheme for this one, as they have a strong link to Maugan Ra, so the colours will be purple and black. I'm thinking of painting a ghostly skull on the faceplate, too. We'll see how that turns out, as I only have limited experience with free hand painting. If anyone has a skull motif they think would work that I can copy, feel free to send it over!

 

[Evil Eye]

These are incredible! I actually really like the Dire Avenger one, so simple but so effective!

[CancelledApocalypse]

7 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

These are incredible! I actually really like the Dire Avenger one, so simple but so effective!

Thanks! Hope they're giving you inspiration for your own aspect wraithlord! Have you decided what you're going to do with it, yet?

 

The last of the unpainted wraithlords is the Swooping Hawk aspect. This was one I had the clearest idea about pose beforehand and is modelled after one of Jes Goodwin's original 90s Swooping Hawk sculpts. It's supposed to look like it's coming in to land (or possibly taking off backwards) while firing its hand held bright lance.

 

The back wings are exarch wings and the wingtips on the shoulders are from a standard swooping hawk. I also wanted to keep the weapons as close to the aspect as possible, so a bright lance in place of a lasblaster and on the I mounted twin missile launchers from the Aeronautica Nightwing flyers kit on the wrists to parallel the swooping hawk grenade packs. They would represent a single missile launcher in battle. The base is from another bits lot and is from the Drazhar kit.

 

I've decided this wraithlord is going to be from Saim Hann, so I'm going to have fun mixing bright vibrant red with pale blue and dark green. That also conveniently means a white head from both schemes. I'm hoping this one will be particularly striking visually when it's painted up. We'll see.

[CancelledApocalypse]

And lastly but not leastly, the Fire Dragon wraithlord. I've already posted the completed paintjob, but here are the WIP pics, too. The pose is a standard 'one foot up on the thing' pose, but I wanted it to look like the wl was stepping over a boundary wall to hose whatever was hiding behind it with fire. The pose is actually heavily inspired by a piece of 90s eldar art (also below - you can just see the fire dragon exarch bottom left of the image torching some ork in a similar fashion).

 

The giant firepike (which I'm provisionally naming 'Incandescent Devourer') was made from bits of bright lance and the old old epic eldar titan heat lance. The additional underslung fuel pod came from a 'modern' metal fire dragon exarch's fire pike. The head is obviously from the webway gate kit (as is the Avenger wraithlord's head). Beyond the giant fire pike, and having to repose the left leg and right arm, it was a fairly simple conversion.

 

In terms of paint job, I decided to go for Arach Qin as the red and black was already prevalent in the classic fire dragon's red and yellow scheme. Originally, the fire dragon scheme was a lot more dominant, bu I was a bit worried halfway through painting that the result was going to look too busy and also that the Arach Qin scheme would be lost, so I put a lot more black into it than I was intending. In hindsight, I could possibly have put even more black in, but I'm pretty happy with the finished article, nevertheless.

 

So that's all the wraithlords modelled and one fully painted. Let me know what you guys think. :)

 

[Evil Eye]

Oh, that is fantastic! Wonderfully oldschool.

[CancelledApocalypse]

On 2/21/2023 at 10:54 PM, Evil Eye said:

Oh, that is fantastic! Wonderfully oldschool.

 

Thanks for the compliment! It's very much appreciated :)

 

I'm still going with the project. Not sure when the next one will be painted up, though.

[Xenith]

Awesome work, love seeing nods to RT era/2nd ed art. 

[Doobles57]

Love these. Looking forward to seeing more painted! The posing on them all is great, but the Striking Scorpion is a real favourite.

[CancelledApocalypse]

Thanks guys, much appreciated! :)

[CancelledApocalypse]

Finally got another aspect wraithlord painted up. This one is the Dire Avenger wraithlord, with the classic blue and white scheme mixed with Biel Tan craftworld's traditional green and white. I really like this scheme, though I think I could have done slightly better with some of the bits, particularly the white thorn design splitting the green and blue. If I get the chance, I might add some more (muted) thorn designs to the wraithlord's right lower leg and possibly the right side of the head (left from our view, face on).

 

Hopefully it won't take this long to paint the next wraithlord. I'm hoping to have either the banshee wraithlord or the dark reaper wraithlord painted up for Halloween. This year.

[The Yncarne]

Great colors 

[CancelledApocalypse]

Thanks TY! I love really vibrant colours on Eldar. I think B&C ups the saturation on my images somewhat, but then the other site I post on mutes them down a bit. Not sure why.

[Brother Tyler]

I love the pose. It's a great understated stance embodying the stoicism of the Aspect.

 

I think that the thorn idea was great, though it's really only visible in a few spots. I'd love to see more.

 

I'm surprised that the heraldry of the Dire Avengers or the specific shrine to which the Aeldari belonged wasn't incorporated somewhere.

 

[CancelledApocalypse]

Cheers! Yeah, I wanted a fairly easy stance for this one. I have a range of stances in terms of dynamism for the conversions, but hopefully all of them look natural, and potentially call back to the original models and their stances.

 

I'll probably do some more thorn patterns, but I might try to make them look like Hendarion's non-outlined thorn patterns, with the embossed/debossed effects he does so well. So maybe dark thorns on the leg and brighter white thorn patterns on the side of the helm. It just depends on time and the desire to go back to it.

 

I did want to put the Dire Avengers symbol on somewhere, but I decided I liked the head/faceplate blank (barring the spiritstones) and then couldn't really work out where else to put it. Any suggestions?

Edited October 8 by CancelledApocalypse

[Brother Tyler]

 

I did want to put the Dire Avengers symbol on somewhere, but I decided I liked the head/faceplaet blank (barring the spiritstones) and then couldn't really work out where else to put it. Any suggestions?

 

Perhaps a banner hanging from the barrel of his gun? 

[Falmovth]

 

Cheers! Yeah, I wanted a fairly easy stance for this one. I have a range of stances in terms of dynamism for the conversions, but hopefully all of them look natural, and potentially call back to the original models and their stances.

 

I'll probably do some more thorn patterns, but I might try to make them look like Hendarion's non-outlined thorn patterns, with the embossed/debossed effects he does so well. So maybe dark thorns on the leg and brighter white thorn patterns on the side of the helm. It just depends on time and the desire to go back to it.

 

I did want to put the Dire Avengers symbol on somewhere, but I decided I liked the head/faceplate blank (barring the spiritstones) and then couldn't really work out where else to put it. Any suggestions?

 

If you don't want to add anything more to the model bitswise, you could always put one on one of the white crest panels, or maybe a kneepad?  

 

I really love the colours you've gone for with it, the dark blue and the green work so well together.